


brothers and lovers (she and i were)

by orphan_account



Series: Edieverse [1]
Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst, F/M, M/M, Mental Instability, Recreational Drug Use, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-21
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-19 05:26:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/569596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Eduardo has always been a girl, and nothing changes, or maybe everything does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. in the beginning, there was a girl

**Author's Note:**

> This idea has been slowly gestating in my head since July, and after a lot of indecision and late-night writing marathons and a trip to Florida that doubled as fic research, I'm finally posting this thing. Um, I hope you enjoy?

 

  
_"Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly_  
 _flames everywhere._  
 _I can tell already you think I’m the dragon,_  
 _that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon._  
 _I’m not the princess either._  
 _Who am I? [...]_  
 _I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,_  
 _I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow_  
 _glass, but that comes later."_ \- Richard Siken

* * *

Eduardo Louise Saverin was mistaken for a boy upon her birth, and she's been trying to make up for that fact ever since.

She tells everyone she's from Florida, but it feels like a lie when she says it; Miami isn't home, not really. Home is Brazil, a whisper of a place she half-remembers, not this crowded glossy riotous city where all the tourists speak slowly to her because they assume she doesn't know English.

She tells everyone her name is Edie, too. Not Eduardo. She already looks enough like a boy, with her short hair and her shapeless clothing, so why add insult to injury? Edie is a pretty name, a name for a Warholian socialite with dark winged eyeliner and dangling earrings. The girl Eduardo wishes she could be.

She can't be that girl, though. She has to go to business school.

"What are you going to do with yourself, _querida_?" her mother sighs, and flaps her cocktail-ringed hands.

"I don't know," Eduardo mumbles truthfully, because she's never really thought about it.

All she knows is that she has to make a lot of money somehow and "carry on their legacy". Her dad is kind of obsessed with the Saverin family legacy. Eduardo isn't sure what that legacy is, exactly. To her it seems like the only thing they'll be remembered for is their dysfunctionality.

"Your father wants you to go to college," Mrs. Saverin says. "For the business. I want you to go to college, too, but to find a husband, yes?"

"Mom," says Eduardo in disgust. "I'm like eighteen years old. I don't want to get married yet."

"Your cousin Beatriz is engaged and she's your age."

 _Yeah, well, the last time I saw Beatriz, we were fifteen and I caught her in the hall closet with the pizza delivery guy_ , Eduardo wants to say, but she bites her tongue and nods at her mother like a good girl.

"That's nice," Eduardo says. "I think I'm going to focus on school first."

"Harvard," Mrs. Saverin says, lighting a cigarette. "Your father says Harvard. Oh, the boys there will love you."

She's supposed to go to Harvard after her senior year.

She doesn't, though.

After Eduardo gets in, it feels like her future is assured. She can relax. She can not worry about anything. She can go out every night if she wants to.

So she does.

Eduardo has always liked hurricanes. The way they spiral out of control. The way they wreck everything in their path, moving relentlessly across the land, destroying everything that people have spent years building.

Eduardo, eighteen and reckless, unleashed upon the Miami night, is very like a hurricane.

She snatches every good time that can be had out of the air with reckless impulsivity, dances until the break of dawn in nightclubs filled with smoke and neon and chrome, kisses boys she does and doesn't know. At first it's fun, and then, like most things, it starts turning miserable by degrees. The boys start fighting with each other and with her, and the nightclubs are full of people she can't stand.

She spends more and more of her time lying on the king-size mattress that she moved into what used to be her walk-in closet, curled around a bottle of Jack Daniels, safe in her nest away from the real world. Eduardo is lonely and sad, and she hates talking about being lonely and sad, so it's only when she stumbles home at five in the morning and her parents find her collapsed asleep on the front porch that they realize she has a problem.

Everyone else is packing for college.

Eduardo is packing for a treatment center.

In rehab, she learns that she needs to redirect her irrational, violent impulses onto something healthy. Channel her aggression into art or music or sports. Or at least keep everything locked away, where other people can't see. She makes it through the program with flying colors. Pretending to be normal is easy, and she was never really dependent on drugs or alcohol or self-harm the way the other people here are. It was just sort of filling a void, a hole that's still there.

After that, Eduardo spends the rest of the year floating around her parents' house. She hides in her room a lot and works on equations to predict the weather, because her parents' fights are getting worse. Sometimes she hears the crashing of broken glass from the kitchen, and turns her music up extra loud, trying to focus on the patterns of tornadoes.

This is how Eduardo makes over three hundred thousand dollars predicting oil futures. Because she's bored and needs something to distract her from the emotional abscess in her chest. Sometimes she can't believe her own life.

Her father is proud of her, for once. It's a rare occasion. He claps her on the shoulder, a little too hard, and says "Good job, Eduardo." This is only the third time in her life she's heard him say this. It's a nice feeling.

Eduardo doesn't really know what to do with all that money, so she just keeps it. Well, most of it. Before she goes to Harvard, she takes the opportunity to change herself completely. She gets clothes that hug what little curves she possesses, and gets her eyebrows plucked, and learns how to do her makeup so she looks like a hot business lady instead of the teenage girl she still is. It's a costume, really, and a good one, because when Eduardo looks in the mirror she doesn't recognize herself.

Harvard is very, very different from Miami.

It's colder, even in August, and feels almost lifeless. The students scurry around with their heads bowed from the weight of the world on their shoulders, and Eduardo walks in tall. No wonder they all stare at her. The boys love her, just like her mother said, but it isn't a love she wants.

They aren't boys, really. They aren't men, either. They think pajama pants are acceptable to wear outside, and spend most of their spare time playing Halo, and act so predatory towards girls that it makes Eduardo want to hide in her dorm room and never, ever leave. Some of them actually yell at her when she's walking to class, things like _nice tits, sweetheart_ (obviously meant to be mocking, since Eduardo's flat as a board), but she just scrunches up her face and scowls at them. She's not brave enough to yell back yet.

On the sixth day, she finally meets some boys in the dining hall, two-thirds of whom aren't douchebags. One of them waves her over to their table, and Eduardo joins them gratefully, relieved to have some company.

"Hi, I'm Dustin," says the one who waved.

"Hi," she replies, "I'm Eduardo."

Dustin looks at her confusedly; this is the response she always gets when she tells someone her name.

"But that's a name for a dude. A Mexican dude."

"How original of you to say so," she says tightly. "And I'm from Florida. Call me Edie, everyone does."

"O _kay_ , then," Dustin says. "Edie, this is Chris - " he points at a good-looking blonde boy who is staring down at his pasta like it's the key to unlocking the mystery of human existence - "and this is Mark."

Mark is not acknowledging Edie's presence in any way whatsoever. He looks like every nice Jewish boy that Edie's mother has tried to get her to date; the Chia Pet hair, the wrinkled hoodie, the distinct aversion to eye contact. Her initial reaction to him is a mixture of pity and contempt.

"Mark," Dustin chides. "There is a girl here."

Mark sighs and looks up at Edie. "Hi," he says flatly.

"He's kind of our pet sociopath," Chris explains. "We take care of him and make sure that he remembers to eat and sleep and socially interact."

Edie doesn't have any response to that, so she starts peeling off the crusts from her sandwich instead. She has to do that before she eats sandwiches, and she's never really known why. The brown crusts spiral and fall onto her paper plate.

"What do you do?" Mark says suddenly, staring fixedly at Edie. It's a disconcerting stare, like she's a dead moth and he's trying to stick a pin through her.

"I'm an econ major," she says.

Mark's mouth twitches into something that could charitably be described as a frown. "There aren't very many girls in that major."

"Yes, I know," Edie says.

"Why did you choose it?"

She lifts her chin a little, proudly. "Because I'm good at it."

"And she's modest, too!" Dustin chimes in sarcastically.

Ignoring Dustin, Mark leans forward on his elbows. "How good?"

"Not to brag," Edie begins, aware that she's bragging even as she says it, "but I made three hundred thousand dollars over the summer betting on oil futures. Predicting hurricanes is easy if you know what you're doing."

"Damn," Chris says. "What did you do with all the money?"

"Nothing, yet."

"If I had that much money, I'd build one of those huge fishtanks and get a shark to put in it."

"Don't be ridiculous, Chris," Mark says. "That would never fit in our dorm."

"We could put it in your bedroom. You never sleep anyway."

"I'm not going to code with a shark over my shoulder, you're already bad enough."

"You're obsessed with sharks?" Edie asks.

"Well," Chris says, a flush of embarassment spreading across his face. "Not really. They're just really fascinating. And I've always wanted a huge tank with a shark in it-"

"Because you are a James Bond villain and you're biding your time until you destroy us all," Dustin interjects. "By day he's mild-mannered Chris Hughes. By night he's...actually, no, still mild-mannered Chris Hughes. Mark would be much more likely to own a shark tank in the scheme of things."

"You don't know what I am by night," Chris mumbles.

"No," Mark says. "Piranhas. I would have piranhas."

"Of course. Any real evil genius worth his salt would have piranhas."

"Mark wouldn't be an evil genius either," Chris says. "Genius I don't dispute, but evil? We'd never let him get to that point. I think the real evil genius here is Eduardo. Look at her. She's a wild card." He points at her with his fork, emphatically. "I mean, she can predict the weather. What's to stop her from harnessing the powers of the elements and destroying us all?"

"The fact that it's not physically possible."

"You are no fun, Mark," Dustin says. "No fun at all."

"You're all pretty fun, actually."

"Then be friends with us, Edie," Chris says. Next to him, Dustin adds a heartfelt "Please."

"I don't think being friends with you guys is even an option at this point," Edie says. "It's an inevitability. Like death, or taxes, or me being a supervillain."

"Just keep us alive when you destroy the world, okay?" Dustin asks.

"I don't make those kind of promises," Edie says, and smiles wickedly.

* * *

Mark Zuckerberg has always been fascinated by things that scare him.

When he was nine years old, he saw Jurassic Park for the first time, and he was just old enough that he'd learned the art of maintaining a poker face in public while inwardly quaking in his proverbial boots. That night, he saw the silhouette of a velociraptor in every shadow that passed across his bedroom wall, and didn't dare to lift his head from under the covers.

The next morning, he wanted to be an archaeologist.

And so it was with everything. Even before the dinosaur incident, Mark was scared of blood, so naturally, when he started losing his baby teeth, he insisted on yanking them out himself. With every loose tooth that he held in his hand, he grew a little less afraid of the pain.

When he started to be interested in girls, Mark was never attracted to the nice ones, the quiet ones, the ones that didn't kiss until the second date. No, his blood ran too hot for them, and if they didn't have something sweetly devious about them, some air of danger in their eyes, then he simply wasn't interested.  
  
That's why he's dating Erica. Because she isn't afraid of him, and he isn't afraid of her, and when they're together it's like they're on a mission to see which one is more daring, more intense, more heartless.  
  
But then Eduardo comes along, this girl with a boy's name, and she is something else. She's the most deceiving girl he's ever met, because she looks so nice, with long tan limbs and brown eyes that shine woodland-creature big, but from the way she talks and glances, Mark can tell she has teeth buried in her soul somewhere.  
  
"I don't like any of the boys here," she says. "They're all so bland. No one here is fucked up enough to be interesting."  
  
Chris snorts. "Yes they are. Everyone here's a little fucked. You would know, you go to more parties than we do."  
  
"That may be, but those guys aren't the interesting kind of fucked-up. They're just drunk assholes in sweater vests. I want someone who's been places and seen things, you know what I mean? Give me someone I can fix."  
  
"You can't fix people," Mark says. "It never ends well."  
  
Edie glances at him, the ghost of a Mona Lisa smile on her lips. "Who says I want something that ends well?"  
  
She comes from a family with more money than sense. She's so good at math she can probably solve equations in her sleep. She's the darkest, bitterest cup of coffee. She's perfect.  
  
Mark is smitten after that, but he'd sooner throw his laptop off a bridge than admit it to anybody.

* * *

"What do you _mean_ you've never seen a Disney Princess movie? What rock do you live under, Mark?" Dustin says.

Mark scowls. "Go away, I'm working."  
  
It's a Friday night and Edie is over at Kirkland House, sitting on the couch between Chris and Dustin, pleasantly buzzed after two beers. Mark is sitting on the floor, laptop in front of him, coding something that Edie can't understand. She really likes Chris and Dustin because they look out for her, and she's never had big brothers, so it's a nice change for her to be taken care of. They look out for Mark, too, but they like Edie, because she actually responds to it.   
  
"Well, we're watching them anyway," Chris says, "because we are not going to let you be a happiness leech and suck the fun out of everything."  
  
"That was uncalled for, Chris."  
  
"You're uncalled for, Princess Dustin."  
  
"Fuck off," Dustin says cheerfully, and gets up to put the movie in.  
  
Less than twenty minutes in, Mark begins complaining about how Pocahontas is historically inaccurate, because John Smith was ugly in real life, and Pocahontas was twelve. No one pays attention to him, because Dustin is too busy demonstrating that he knows all the words to Just Around The Riverbend.  
  
"Edie, you are our Pocahontas," Dustin says. "You're ambiguously brown and you like adventure. We can be your talking animal sidekicks. Mark is that asshole who digs for gold."  
  
Predictably, Mark is less than amused by this, his face scrunching up in indignation. "Just because I gave you guys accurate historical information so you didn't go your whole lives thinking Pocahontas could _actually_ paint with all the colors of the wind - "  
  
"You need to learn how to sing with all the voices of the mountain, Marky Mark," Dustin grins. "Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon?"  
  
"Stop antagonizing him," chides Chris. "It only makes him worse." 

Edie hides her face in her hands. "I can't be a princess. My thighs are too lumpy."

"Oh yeah? Who said?"

"My mom," Edie admits, sheepishly.  
  
"Fuck that," Dustin says. "Anyone else ever tells you your thighs are lumpy, just punch them in the face."  
  
"But my arms are like sticks. I can't punch anybody."  
  
"Stop hating yourself, oh my god," says Chris. "This is just sad. You can't be a super cool business lady if you have such low self esteem. That's it, we're watching Mulan next."  
  
Dustin bounces in his seat. "I love Mulan!"  
  
Mark begins typing louder and faster to express his disapproval.  
  
By the time Pocahontas is over and Mulan starts, Mark has closed his laptop and moved onto the couch with them, wedged at the end next to Edie, who has moved over so Dustin and Chris can sit by each other.  
  
This movie always has made Edie a little sad, but tonight especially so. As embarassing as it is, she gets all choked up during "Reflection," but Chris is also trying not to cry, so it's okay. Dustin pulls the both of them close and doesn't say anything. Mark just sits there and stares at the screen.  
  
Edie wonders if Mark has ever had any real passion in his life besides computers. If he has ever gotten excited about something in the real world. If anything has ever made him horrendously sad.  
  
She sincerely doubts it.

* * *

"Why are there no good final clubs for girls?" Edie asks. "They all have such fucking cutesy names. It's bullshit."

"Did you get punched for any of them?" Mark asks.  
  
They're sitting in the corner booth at Sandwiches As Big As Your Head!, eating the aforementioned sandwiches, which are actually bigger than Edie's head. A bunch of lettuce falls out into her hands, and she puts the sandwich down in annoyance.  
  
"Yeah," she says. "But they're all stupid. I don't want to be in the fucking Bee or the Pleiades or whatever. I'm not an insect or a constellation. Why can't girls be Phoenixes, too? It's not like being represented by a bird that sets itself on fire is gender-specific."  
  
"You should go for it anyway," Mark says.  
  
"I guess," Edie shrugs. "I mean, it is an opportunity to network and meet new people."  
  
"Important people."  
  
"People who wear J. Crew and pearl necklaces and have really shiny teeth."  
  
"You'll have connections. And you can invite us to parties and stuff, so we can - "

" - meet girls, I _know,_ " Edie finishes for him. "Although you already have a girlfriend, so I don't know why you keep going on about meeting girls, and I don't think Dustin is interested in anything. I think he like, reproduces asexually. One day he's just going to split in half and then there will be two Dustins. So I guess that just leaves - "  
  
"Chris is gay," Mark says casually.  
  
Edie is taking a drink at this moment, and almost chokes on her water. "What? How was I not informed?"  
  
"He just figured it out last week. I was the only person he told. He said it was okay if I told you, but I wanted to wait until there was an appropriate time to bring it up."  
  
"Fuck me being punched for the Pleiades, this is a momentous occasion," Edie says. "We're even more diverse than we were before. And that's with me, the three-in-one Brazilian Jewish female combo pack. We're officially the Island of Misfit People."  
  
Mark snorts. "Wardo, oh my god."  
  
"What?"  
  
"You're too much," he says. "Just - too much."  
  
 _Yes_ , Edie wants to say, _I know, I go too far, I overstep my bounds, I must contain this riot inside the space of a girl, shame on me_ , but she says nothing, and eats her sandwich, and smiles.


	2. with you, friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, man. People like this. I was not expecting that at all.
> 
> Anyway, here's chapter two, featuring more adorable group bonding and Dustin being a weenie. (But a loveable weenie.)

Dustin texts Edie at two in the morning -  _Mark just broke up with Erica, and I heard their breakup was pretty heinous, and now he's like working on this website for ranking girls or whatever, so could you come over please as moral support?  -_ and even though Edie is at a party, talking to some blonde All-American type guy who's been staring her down all night, she immediately sprints out of there without so much as a goodbye.

By the time she gets to Kirkland House, Edie has a whole speech prepared about how ranking girls online is creepy and kind of gross, but she's been around Mark long enough now to tell when he's trying to hide being sad, so she doesn't say anything.

He says he is fine, but his glassy eyes and shaking hands tell a different story, a story of how maybe Mark is really passionate about some things, of how maybe he really did love this girl but he couldn't find the right words to keep her with him, of how, like Edie, Mark is always fucking everything up by accident.

If he was less guarded, more open, Edie would shoo everyone out of the room and tell Mark that it was okay for him to cry. And he would cry to her, half-drunk, his spindly arms wrapping around her as he hides his face in her shoulder. He would tell her the truth. She would lie to him and recite the litany e _verything's fine, Mark, everything's fine, it's okay_ , singsong and humming like a prayer.  
  
But that's not Mark's way, and it's not Edie's way either, so she gives him the algorithm, scribbling it on the window with a dry-erase marker, hoping she makes him feel better with every number she writes.  
  
Facemash gets 22,000 hits in two hours and crashes the network.  
  
It may have been a creepy and gross idea fuelled by resentment towards women, but Edie has to admit that Mark might be on to something here.

* * *

"So?" Edie asks as Mark walks out of the administrative building.

"Six months academic probation," he says tiredly.  
  
"Wow." Edie stands, picking her bag up off the ground. "Good job.  
  
"They found my blog."  
  
"You blog?" she says a little incredulously, falling into step beside him as they walk across the quad. "About what?"  
  
"About the creation of Facemash. And stuff."  
  
"Oh," Edie says. "I thought blogging was for people who are sad about life."  
  
"Not really."  
  
Edie shrugs. "Anyway, I should probably tell you that you will have no luck getting a date for the rest of forever. Every girl here hates you now."  
  
"I figured as much," Mark says. "I didn't put your picture up, by the way."  
  
"What, I'm not hot enough for your website?"

"No, no, no," Mark says, obviously flustered. "We hang out together and stuff, so I obviously wouldn't put you on there, because I don't want you to get mad at me, since I think that you, um, you add something. To the group."

"Thanks," Edie says. She had expected that her picture was floating around on Facemash, just like everyone else. Coming from Mark, this was almost a sweet gesture. "You saved me about a week of increased catcalling. I owe you one."

"No problem."  
  
For a fraction of a second, she could have sworn he smiled.

* * *

Chris and Dustin have Shark Week turned on already when Edie and Mark get back, and Dustin makes Mark wear his shark hat.

"This is stupid," Mark says, tugging on one of the strings of the shark hat, which have little plush fins on the ends. "I look stupid. Where did you even get this?"  
  
"You take that back," Chris says. "That hat is a national treasure. I was wearing it when I got my forehead cut open by a tree branch."  
  
"How did you - _what_?"  
  
"It's a long story, Edie." Dustin pokes Chris in the shoulder. "But anyway, you're Chris Potter now, you have the scar and everything."  
  
Chris wrinkles his nose. "You can barely even see it, shut up."  
  
"I'm taking this hat off now," Mark announces. "Someone else can wear it." He takes it off and throws it at Dustin, the hat falling into Dustin's lap.  
  
"How dare you throw the shark hat? Did no one teach you manners?" Dustin says, fake-offended. "This hat is sacred!"  
  
"And you guys are children," Mark snipes.  
  
Abruptly, Mark turns and goes back to his room, closing the door a little too sharply behind him.  
  
"Whatever," retorts Dustin, jamming the shark hat back down over his head. "He's just a hater."  
  
Chris rolls his eyes heavenward. "Please never say that again."  
  
"Make me."  
  
"Mark's right," Edie says. "You guys are children."  
  
"Speak for yourself, Edie Louise. I'm probably the most mature one here."  
  
"No you're not," retorts Dustin. "You still hang out with us, how mature can you be?"  
  
"I still hang out with you to keep you miscreants in line," Chris says fondly.  
  
"I thought that was my job."  
  
"Edie, you keep Mark in line. But I keep us in line as like, a unit."  
  
Dustin points to the television in alarm. "Chris," he says, worriedly. "A shark is eating a dude."  
  
The clip is replayed in slow motion. A man stands in shallow, tranquil water, feeding a group of smaller, less violent sharks. As the video progresses, more sharks emerge than the man intended, and one darts up behind him to attack his leg. Edie is alternately horrified and intrigued, unable to look away from the way the man's flesh trails in strings around the massive wound, the gleam of white bone, the blood discoloring the water.  
  
Dustin buries his head in Chris's shoulder, squeezing his eyes tight.

"Tell me when it's over," he whimpers. "I can't watch."  
  
"It's Shark Week," Chris says. "Sharks eat things, Dustin. That's what they do. What did you expect?"  
  
"I don't know, but not - he only lost half his leg!?"  
  
Sure enough, they show the gore, the horrific vivisection of muscle and bone. Edie still can't look away. She wonders what made the shark leap out and attack like that. She wishes she could cut through the water, as sleek as a knife, and hurt people before they hurt her first.

"Let's watch something else," Chris says hurriedly. "I think we traumatized Dustin."  
  
"I'm not traumatized!" Dustin squawks, lifting his head. "I'm not, I'm not."  
  
Chris laughs, good-naturedly, and changes the channel to something benign.  
  
After a while, Edie goes on a beer and taco run, and Mark is lured out of his room by the scent of Mexican food when she gets back. The four of them sit squished together on the couch, watching some boring police procedural that Chris likes, until Dustin and Chris have fallen onto each other in a sleepy cuddle pile.  
  
Edie's feeling loose and easy, sitting on the floor, leaning against the bottom of the couch. She looks up at Mark, her eyes half-lidded, studying the angles of his face illuminated by the television's harsh glow.  
  
"Mark?" she asks.  
  
He responds automatically, "Yeah."  
  
"I'm so glad I'm friends with you guys."  
  
He tilts his head a little to look down at her.  
  
"Me too," he says. "I like- I like having you around, Wardo."  
  
When Edie mentions this to Dustin the next day, he tells her that Mark doesn't say that to very many people.  
  
What Edie doesn't tell Dustin is that no one has said that to her before, ever.


	3. been trying to meet you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand welcome to chapter three!
> 
> The Pixies song referenced is called "Hey," and I used some of the lyrics for the chapter title, as well.
> 
> Also, my mental image of Edie is basically Aubrey Plaza. And boy!Christy looks like Steven Yeun. I don't know why I felt the need to let you guys know that. This is probably not what the notes are for.

  
_“It’s just that I feel so sad these wonderful nights. I sort of feel they’re never coming again, and I’m not really getting all I could out of them.” -_ **F. Scott Fitzgerald**

* * *

"It's not that girls like me are generally attracted to Asian guys," Edie says, tapping her fingers on the side of the red solo cup she's holding. "It's that Asian guys are generally attracted to girls like me."

"Save some for the rest of us, why don't you," Chris grumbles.

"There are at least three Asian guys here, and according to the algorithm that I'm working on to define the connection between Jewish girls and Asian guys, one of them is gay or at least bisexual, so Chris might be in luck." Dustin smiles a little too brightly and turns to Edie. "Mark's here."

And so he is, slouching in his gray hoodie and cargo shorts, perfectly inconspicuous and yet incredibly out of place at AEPi's Caribbean Night. Edie dances over to him, her movements loose and swaying, secretly pleased as she watches Mark's face flush with embarrassment. She takes one of the leis from around her neck and tries to put it on him, but he squirms and waves her off.

"Wardo, no," Mark says, batting her hand away.

"Come _on_ , Mark. Live a little."

"I need to talk to you."

Edie looks back over her shoulder at Chris and Dustin, motioning to Mark and mouthing  _I'll be right back, guys,_ but they are deep in conversation and don't seem to hear her. She follows Mark over to the window, wondering what exactly is going on. 

"I think I've come up with something," Mark says, and from the look in his eyes she can tell that whatever it is has been blazing in his mind all day. 

"What kind of something?"   
  
"Come outside."

"Mark, not all of us have your tolerance for cold. It's like 20 degrees outside and I'm wearing a coconut bra."

"So you are," Mark says, as nonchalantly as if he were telling someone that it was raining outside. "You can wear my hoodie. But I can't stare at that loop of Niagara Falls which has absolutely nothing to do with the Caribbean."

Again, Edie follows Mark out the door, up the stairs and outside. They stand outside the door, and Mark peels off his hoodie. When Edie pulls it on, it smells like Mark, which is to say it smells like just about every teenage boy ever; a mixture of body spray, mild sweat, and residual cigarette smoke from other people's parties.  
  
"People came to Facemash in a stampede, right?" Mark begins.

"Yeah," Edie agrees, not really sure what he's getting at.  
  
"It wasn't because they saw pictures of hot girls. You can go anywhere on the Internet and see pictures of hot girls."  
  
"Yeah," Edie says again.   
  
She kind of wishes Mark would stop talking about hot girls. She briefly wonders what kind of girls, exactly, Mark considers hot. He seems to like girls like Erica, Edie thinks. Mousy, plain, studious, sweet. 

Edie is short, and brown, and has a Brazilian dancehall ass, and is about as far from sweet as Mark is from Jake Gyllenhaal. 

She should really forget it. What Mark is saying, right now, is important, and her mind needs to be fully present for all of it.

"It was because they saw pictures of girls they _knew_ ," Mark continues fervidly. "People wanted to go on the Internet and check out their friends. Why not build a website that offers that? Friends, pictures, profiles that you can visit, browse around for someone you just met at a party. I'm talking about taking the entire social experience of college and putting it online."

Edie hugs herself, shivering. "Mark, I can't feel my legs."

"I know. I'm totally psyched about this too. But, Wardo - "

"Yeah?"

"It would be exclusive," Mark says. "You'd have to know the people on the site to get past your own page. Like getting punched."

And there's the hook. Exclusivity. Like a -

"Wardo," Mark breathes. "It's like a final club, except we're the presidents."

Suddenly, Edie forgets about it being cold. She forgets about the fact that she can still hear the stupid steel drum music filtering in from outside. She forgets about everything but the fact that she and Mark are going to be president of something, and make a website together, and possibly take over the known universe.

"That's the best idea you've ever had," Edie says, sincerely, and Mark half-smiles at her. 

"It's going to be so great. Especially because there's nothing to hack. People are going to provide all their own information."

"Why did you come to me about this first, though? Why not Dustin or Chris? Since, you know, they actually program things?"

"They looked...busy," Mark says. "And we're gonna need a little start-up cash to rent the servers and get it online."

Edie raises an eyebrow. "I see, I see," she says playfully. "You're just using me for my money. I am offended, sir." She flips her hair dramatically over one shoulder. 

"Wardo, no, don't be so - look, we'll split it 70-30. 70 for me, 30 for you for putting up the money and handling everything on the business end. You're CFO."

"I'm CFO," Edie repeats.

"Yep."

"Let's do it," she says. "Fuck yes. Let's do it."

"Okay," Mark says.

The moment, like their breath, hangs for a single frosted second, and then evaporates, as quickly as it came. Edie turns away, back to the door, back inside to heat and friends and lukewarm punch, and asks, "Are you coming, Mark?"

He shakes his head, and doesn't say anything.

"I'll let you know how the party is," Edie grins, and goes inside.

She's still wearing his hoodie.

* * *

Their website (which is now called theFacebook, apparently) is starting to be less of an idea and more of an actual thing, and it's a really exciting actual thing, even if those two uppity white-bread male model types that Mark disparagingly calls the Winklevii sent them a cease and desist letter. 

Edie was mad about the cease and desist letter, especially because she hadn't known about the full extent of this Harvard Connection debacle, but trying to get Mark to take things like that seriously is like pulling teeth, so she gave up after a while.

"Look," Mark says, beckoning Edie over to see the screen, "Eduardo Saverin, CFO."  
  
There it is, right next to Mark's name, plain and stark in blue type, their names and titles connected by an ampersand.

 _Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, & Eduardo Saverin, CFO._  
  
Edie gets an ache at the top of her nose, like she always does before she's about to cry, except this time she's about to cry from happiness.  
  
"You have no idea what this will mean to my father," she says to Mark, and he tilts his head, smiling impishly.  
  
"Of course I do."  
  
She doesn't need final clubs anymore; she's done with all this divisive bullshit, done with institutions that tell her point-blank that she's not allowed in because girls aren't supposed to take over the world. Like Mark said that night outside the AEPi party, theFacebook was like a final club, except they were the presidents. No, president. Together. One singular entity in two bodies. It's like the refrain of that Pixies song on the CD that Dustin gave her for her birthday - _if you go, I will surely die. We're chained._  
  
Now every night before she falls asleep, Edie closes her eyes and imagines her and Mark taking over the world, together, forever. She's in her black spandex tube dress and fuck-you pumps, Mark is actually wearing a suit (which is how she knows it's a daydream), and even though they look like business professionals, they're still young, hungry, dangerous, like they don't belong there, everything in slow motion, everything in synchronicity.  
  
What Edie forgets about the Pixies song on the CD Dustin made for her is that the other part of the lyrics go like this - _must be a devil between us_ \- but there's not a thought in her head of anything ever coming between them, because _we're chained, we're chained, we're chained.  
_

* * *

How Edie meets Christy is like this:

Mark and Edie are at the Bill Gates lecture, half-listening and passing notes to each other, when they hear someone whispering behind them, a guy and a girl.  
  
"Hey," says the guy. "Are you Mark Zuckerberg? The guy who made theFacebook?"  
  
Edie turns around. "Yes, he is," she says, and then stops, because the boy she's talking to is so attractive he can't possibly be real. He's tall and delicate, with a swoop of black hair that falls into his kind dark eyes, and he's looking at her in a different way than any boy has ever looked at her before. She can tell he wants her, and it's exhilarating beyond belief.  
  
"I'm Christy Lee," the boy says. "And this is Alice."  
  
"Cool," Edie nods. "I'm - " She almost says  _I'm Wardo,_ and stops herself. "I'm Edie."

"We should go out later," Alice says. "Facebook me."

Two hours later, Edie is making out with Christy in the bathroom of a club, dragging her mouth along his neck, moaning and sighing.  
  
Christy's hands move down to the zipper of Edie's pants, and then inside. She lets him play with her for a little while. He's bad at it, of course, and he couldn't find her clit if she pointed to it on a fucking map, but she pretends to be into it, because it would be really nice if she had a boyfriend.  
  
Someone comes in, and Edie freezes.  
  
"It's okay," Christy says. He takes his hand out of her pants. "I don't care."  
  
Edie looks down and sees Mark's flip-flops in the next stall, and Alice's high heels beside them.  
  
"I don't care either," she says viciously, turning back to Christy, and bends down to undo the zipper of his pants.  
  
"Holy shit," Christy says as she wraps her mouth around his cock, "oh god, Edie."  
  
In the next stall over, Alice is on her knees too.  
  
Edie wonders how Alice feels about this whole thing. If she does this often. If she's used to it. If she thinks Mark is some kind of hero or rock star or god. Christy has his hand on the back of Edie's head, rocking his hips back and forth, fucking her mouth so hard that Edie barely has an opportunity to do anything.  
  
She can hear Mark, high-pitched and keening, breathing "Alice, Alice, Alice," making noises she's never heard him make before.  
  
When Christy comes in her mouth, Edie swallows, looking up into his eyes when she does it, challenging him. _I'm a slut,_ she thinks, and the thought thrills her as much as it terrifies her. _I'm your slut._  
  
"Oh, Mark," Alice sighs, her voice bubblegum-sweet.  
  
Edie stands up, wobbling in her too-high heels, and winks at Christy, trailing her hand down his chest as she exits the stall. He smirks back at her, dazed in the afterglow, adoration in his eyes.  
  
"Facebook me, Christy Lee," she says.  
  
Outside, she leans against the wall, and waits for Mark.

* * *

"We have groupies," Edie says afterwards, grinning wickedly, unable to contain herself. "We actually have groupies, what the fuck."

"Yeah, we do."  
  
Mark notices Erica across the room. She has at least three boys around her who look like they walked straight out of those stupid vampire books Dustin likes to read. Maybe it's just because he's looking at her from a distance, but it looks like she's happy. She's moving on.   
  
Jealousy forms low and white hot at the base of his stomach, and the anger along with it, rooting him to the spot as he watches her.  
  
They have groupies, and there will be more of them, girls and boys flinging themselves at him and Edie, but the girls that Mark wants never seem to want him back.  
  
 _It's because you're an asshole_ , he remembers Erica saying.   
  
There was a girl on her knees for him tonight, but she was the wrong girl, and she wants to see him again. There was another girl on her knees tonight, and she's standing next to him, and she will never want to touch him, because she knows him too well.

Erica never got on her knees for anyone. She was always proud that way. 

No matter what Mark does, no matter what becomes of theFacebook, this he knows: Erica will forget him. She is laughing, and her hair is shining in the lights, and she will forget him. He will be a story someday, after she gets married to someone rich and respectable.  _This one time in college, I dated a total creep, and he blogged about me afterwards, and he ended up making this super creepy website that turned into a dumb start-up that everyone forgot about._  
  
"Mark?" Edie asks.  
  
"We should leave," Mark says. "We should really-"  
  
Edie looks at Mark knowingly.  
  
"Yeah," Edie says. "Let's go."

* * *

When they get back to Kirkland, Edie spends the rest of the night talking to Dustin and Chris about how much she likes Christy, who Dustin has termed Asian Chris in order to differentiate him from "my favorite Chris".  
  
Mark starts working on expanding theFacebook to Yale and Columbia.  
  
He works until five in the morning, and as his head falls onto his keyboard he dimly registers that this is the first time Edie has never barged into his room to make him go to sleep.

* * *

Christy is a DJ at a club on weekends, and he's always on time to pick Edie up, and he likes buying her things, even though he knows she has enough money to pay his rent for a year if she wanted to.  
  
He draws hearts on Edie's knees with pink highlighter when she is supposed to be studying.  
  
They have drunk, sloppy sex, and in the mornings Christy makes her breakfast. He is particularly good at making French toast, and he likes to sing along to the radio while he's cooking. Sometimes he teaches Edie new dance steps, and burns the French toast.  
  
Edie really likes Christy.  
  
And Christy really loves Edie.  
  
He told her he loved her the second time they went out. The snow was melting on the ground, but the blue Christmas lights were still up on the promenade of trees. They stood in the middle of the walkway, and he kissed her, and he said "Edie, I love you so much," just like that.  
  
"You're so sweet," Edie said, throwing her arms around his neck. "You're so sweet to me, Christy Lee."  
  
She has been with plenty of boys, but none of them have ever told her they loved her before.  
  
Christy also likes doing drugs. A lot. It doesn't really bother Edie as much as it should, because she trusts him to take care of himself, but he is almost always high on something. He likes hallucinogens, especially, so whenever she is with him, he is prone to furious flights of fancy, constructing another world for them to live in. He promises that he will always protect her and take care of her, and when she graduates he will follow her wherever she goes next, and he will never make her cry.  
  
But Edie is never sure if that's the drugs talking or not, so she can never, ever, ever love him back.


	4. after you get what you want (you don't want it)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really have much to say about this chapter except that everyone's lives are rapidly tangling into a horrible mess and it's all my fault.

_“ If you try to avoid every instance of peer pressure you will end up without any peers whatsoever, and the trick is to succumb to enough pressure that you do not drive your peers away, but not so much that you end up in a situation in which you are dead or otherwise uncomfortable. This is a difficult trick, and most people never master it, and end up dead or uncomfortable at least once during their lives.”_ - **Lemony Snicket**

* * *

Several weeks after she starts seeing Christy, Edie drags Mark and Dustin and Chris to the club where Christy DJs.

The club is called Spark, which strikes Edie as very pretentious. It has a velvet rope and a bouncer, just like clubs in the movies, and there are two lines: one for people on the list, and one for people who might be chosen to get in. The second line is full of sorority girls, and smells overwhelmingly of cheap Victoria's Secret body spray. Every time the line moves forward, the sorority girls all surge as one to the front, like lemmings diving off a cliff. They're all so desperate, convinced that if they're deemed pretty enough, that if they can just get into this club, then their lives will be forever charmed.

Edie knows better. Once you get into the club, you're still not satisfied. You start wanting to get into a better club. There's always something bigger up ahead, and if you chase it, you'll be chasing a phantom for the rest of your life.

Now she's a founding member of the best club there is, and none of those lost girls in the other line have any idea.  
  
"Why are we here again?" Chris asks.  
  
"To meet Christy," replies Mark. "I've already met Christy. Can I go home?"

"No, Mark. Stop being such a misanthrope. This might be a good networking opportunity." Edie smiles and flashes her ID at the bouncer, who opens the door for them. 

Mark grumbles something about using fancy words and not wanting to network with a bunch of drunk idiots, and shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie.  
  
"Oh my god," Dustin says in awe, stepping through into the club. "This place is insane."  
  
In the dark of the room there are hundreds of people pressed together, scaled in glittering sequins and packed like sardines. There's a disco ball overhead, and strobe lights flashing different colors, everything melting from red to green to blue to purple and back again. Up in the DJ booth Edie can see Christy, headphones around his neck, making one song flow effortlessly into the next.  
  
"Come on," she says, "come dance with me."  
  
Dustin and Chris follow her, holding hands, eager to move into the sea of writhing bodies, but Mark stays put, leaning back against the wall.  
  
"Come on," Edie says again, teasingly, "Mark, come dance with me."  
  
He shakes his head, and looks nervously to the left and right of him, tense, intimidated, out of place. Edie can tell the lights and sound are too much for him. Mark's sensitive that way.  
  
"I'm fine," Mark says. "I'm good right here."  
  
Edie shrugs. "Well, if you're sure," she begins, and then, unsure what to say after that, turns and walks away, up the glittery stairs to the DJ booth, up to her Christy.  
  
Christy's wearing a tank top that shows his beautiful collarbones and the sweet way his shoulder curves and flows into his neck, and Edie comes up behind him to kiss that spot, her arms draping around him, holding him close.  
  
"I missed you, Christy baby," she purrs in his ear, but the music is so loud he can barely hear her. Christy turns his head towards her and they kiss, frantically, like they haven't seen each other in a long time, even though they just hung out yesterday.  
  
"I missed you too," he says when they pull away. "Are you here by yourself?"  
  
"No, I brought my nerd herd. They want to meet you. That is, Dustin and Chris want to meet you. Mark is being a baby about it."  
  
"I'll be done with my set soon," Christy says, kissing her on the cheek. "Then I'll come down and say hi."  
  
"Okay," Edie smiles. "You know where to find me."  
  
She turns, blowing Christy a kiss, and walks slowly back down the silvery stairs, careful not to fall in her high heels. Once Edie's safely back on the ground, she goes to look for Dustin and Chris, but they've disappeared into the crushing tide of people and she can't find them.  
  
Mark is still standing by the wall as if someone froze him there. He reminds Edie of a little boy who wandered away from his mom at the supermarket and found himself lost in the produce section, only instead of vegetables, Mark is surrounded by idiots.  
  
"Where did Dustin and Chris go?" Edie asks him as she approaches.  
  
"I don't know," he answers automatically. "How's Christy?"  
  
"He's fine."  
  
Edie leans against the wall next to Mark, and they people-watch for a while. The more time Edie spends with Mark, the more she gets used to being on the outskirts of the crowd instead of inside it.  
  
"Why don't you want to dance with me?" Edie asks, to break the silence.  
  
"You have a boyfriend. Dance with him."  
  
"His set isn't over yet." Edie nudges Mark's arm a little, and he flinches away from her. "Come _on_ , Mark. Are you going to spend your whole life watching other people do fun things?"  
  
"It doesn't work like that, Wardo," Mark says tersely. "You have a boyfriend, dance with him."  
  
"But Dustin and Chris are best friends, and they-"  
  
"More like best friends with benefits," Mark scoffs.  
  
Edie didn't know this at all. She's seen the way Dustin looks at Chris sometimes, sly and longing, and Chris is physically comfortable with Dustin in a way that he isn't with anyone else, but she never thought very deeply about it, and the little tidbit of information Mark just gave her actually makes a whole lot of sense.  
  
"Well. That's...unexpected," she says, because it is.  
  
"I told Dustin it was a bad idea." The colors of the melting lights are flashing across Mark's face, pink and green and gold, shadows nestling in his cheekbones. "I told him never to get involved with people who aren't going to appreciate you for what you are. I learned that after Erica."  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"Chris won't date Dustin. He'll do everything else, but he won't date him."  
  
"Has he told Dustin this yet?"  
  
Mark shakes his head no.  
  
"Are you sure we're talking about the same Dustin? The one who always tells me never to settle and is on a one-man crusade to boost my self esteem?"  
  
"Everyone's a hypocrite, eventually," says Mark, staring pensively at the disco ball.  
  
"I guess," Edie shrugs. "It's a little disappointing, though."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"I thought I had finally found a group of friends that didn't do stuff like that to each other."  
  
"Friends always do stuff like that to each other," Mark says. "Friendship, in most cases, isn't ever about how much you care for the other person. It's just something that's preferable to being alone."  
  
"That's not true. Not for me. I care about everybody I'm friends with."  
  
Mark is quiet for a while. Eventually he straightens up, taking his hands out of his pockets, and says, "Most people say that, and if you were anyone else, I'd disagree with you. But you do care about everyone you're friends with. It's your worst flaw."

"How is that a flaw?" Edie looks at him in disbelief. Last time she checked, caring about people is a good thing. Maybe her vague suspicions are correct, and Mark is actually a highly advanced robot.

"You worry too much," Mark says. "You shouldn't."  
  
To Edie, telling her not to worry is like telling a bird not to fly. Of course she worries too much; doesn't everyone, when they have people they care about? She worries that Mark doesn't get enough sleep, and that Dustin isn't quite as happy as he seems, and that Christy does too many drugs. (Edie doesn't worry about Chris, though, because he doesn't do anything to make her worry, at least not yet, and she appreciates that a lot.) If she were ever to stop fussing over them, to stop making sure they get enough food and sleep and don't skip their classes, then it would mean she didn't care about them anymore, or wasn't caring as much as she could.

Dustin slips out of the crowd, Chris-less. He looks pained, kiss-drunk, and lost, and when he walks over to Mark and Edie his shoulders slump defeatedly.  
  
"Can we go now?" he asks.  
  
Edie frowns. "But Christy hasn't-"  
  
"I don't want to hear about anyone with any kind of version of the name Chris, ever again," Dustin says.  
  
"Was it bad?"  
  
"Yes, Mark. It was awful. And now I need to be somewhere that's else."  
  
Edie has never seen Dustin this angry before, and she wonders what Chris could have possibly said to make him this way. Dustin's supposed to be the one for whom everything goes right, the one who sails breezily through life and gives everybody else advice of varying quality. Straightening up, she leads the way out of the smoky club, firing off a text to Christy as she steps out onto the sidewalk. _Sorry, something came up and I had to leave, I'll call you later <3._ She knows Christy will probably be pissed off because she skipped out on him, but she really wants to make Dustin feel better. Dustin walks morosely next to her, head down, and Mark trails behind.  
  
"What happened?" Edie asks, looking at Dustin in concern.  
  
"He waited until we were about to engage in decidedly non-friendlike behavior before he told me that we were never going to date," Dustin replies. "I guess he only wants me around when it's convenient for him."  
  
"I _told_ you it was a bad idea."  
  
Dustin scowls. "Not helpful, Marky Mark."  
  
"Did he say it just like that?" Edie asks. "Like, are you sure that's what he meant?"  
  
"Just like that."  
  
Dustin is blinking rapidly, and he looks like he's trying not to cry.  
  
"I shouldn't be this upset about it," he continues quietly, "But I am, and I guess that means I'm in love with him after all."  
  
The night is clear and cold, the snap of winter not yet broken by the flush of spring; Edie's fingers are freezing even inside her gloves. She looks at Mark, who wears flip-flops in all weather and never seems to be affected by anything, and wishes she could hold his hand.  
  
 _You have a boyfriend_ , she reminds herself, echoing Mark's words in the club. _Hold his hand_.  
  
Edie wishes everything wasn't so fucking complicated. That she did love Christy. That she didn't like Mark.  
  
 _Oh, god_ , Edie realizes with alarm, _I like Mark,_  and to think about it so bluntly makes her want to be sick. She doesn't know how this happened. He just sort of snuck up on her, like an illness that goes undiagnosed until it's way too late, and now she's done for. She thinks of Christy, sweet Christy with his warm smile and dancing eyes, Christy who bought her a tiny key necklace to celebrate a whole month of dating "the nicest girl he's ever met", and the jaws of guilt open to swallow her whole. 

Dustin is still sad and mopey when they get back to Kirkland, so in a rare concession to the wishes of others, Mark agrees to do something stupid. They drag the mattresses off Mark and Dustin's beds, moving them into the living room so the three of them can lie there together and watch Fight Club.  
  
On the screen, Tyler Durden is kissing the narrator's hand, burning him with lye, sowing the seeds of rebellion in his soul.  
  
Edie wants someone to kiss her so hard that it burns, too. 

* * *

 

When Chris finally gets back to the dorm, at half past three in the morning, Edie is half-asleep. Dustin and Mark have long since passed out on either side of her. Occasionally, Mark will mumble sentences in his sleep, nonsense fragments of dreams Edie can't even guess at. She finds it rather endearing.  
  
Dimly, she registers Dustin getting up, leaving her right side cold, and walking into the bedroom. He's saying something that sounds plaintive and desperate, like he's trying to explain something Edie can't hear. Chris responds, angrier, and then Edie is completely awake because both of them are shouting at each other.  
  
"That's not fair," Dustin says, "you can't make me like you and then just _do_ that, that's not fair-"  
  
"It has to be that way, Dustin, you understand-"  
  
"No I don't! Because I refuse to understand bullshit!"  
  
Mark is awake, too, making a light surprised noise as he rolls off the mattress and onto the floor. "What's happening?" he yawns, sitting up and stretching inelegantly.  
  
"Dustin and Chris are fighting," Edie whispers.  
  
"Oh."  
  
"We should go outside. Give them some privacy."  
  
"Okay," Mark whispers back.  
  
They stumble down the stairs into the still-sleeping world. Edie's still in her red club dress with her North Face jacket over it; her tights were abandoned long ago, and goose pimples prickle on her cold legs. Edie leans against the wall, and Mark slumps down next to her, looking up at the navy blue sky. They stay like that for a while, not speaking, enjoying their closeness through silence.  
  
"God," Mark says finally, a note of incredulity in his voice, "what a weird night it's been."  
  
"I know," Edie agrees. "Remember a day ago, when everything was nice and smooth and uncomplicated?"  
  
"Yeah. I am very nostalgic for a day ago."  
  
Edie pulls her phone out of her pocket. She has 26 new texts, and they are all from Christy.  
  
"Me too," she says. "God. I like being with him, but he is so fucking clingy."  
  
"Oh."

"Ugh. I feel like such a shitty girlfriend, but I haven't been dating him for that long and I'm not automatically going to choose him over you guys, you know? It's so...I mean, that's why I wanted you guys to meet him. So then he could come hang out with all of us and it wouldn't be awkward."  
  
"Of course it would be awkward, think about what position that leaves me in. That's two couples - well, one couple and one rapidly imploding semi-couple - and then me. I am not going to be the fifth wheel."  
  
"You're not a wheel, Mark. You're the engine."  
  
"No I'm not. If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't be any kind of car metaphor at all."  
  
"Hey," Edie says. "You're my best friend, you know that?"  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yeah. You're my best friend."  
  
Mark looks up at her, watching her exhale, her breath hovering in the cold air. From his vantage point she's so tall; she stands over him like a sentry, and that's what she is in a way, his protector. Eduardo Saverin, the girl with a boy's name, official champion and defender of Mark Zuckerberg. It's a good title for her. He wants to put it on theFacebook's masthead.  
  
"Wardo?" he asks.

"Yeah?"  
  
"You're mine, too."  
  
Fuck being presidents of theFacebook. Mark wants them to be presidents of the world. 


	5. echo and narcissus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which A Very Bad Thing happens, and I am sorry in advance. 
> 
> Normally this is the part where I would tell you to enjoy the chapter but I'm afraid that's quite impossible.
> 
> (OH GOD, AM I THE LEMONY SNICKET OF THE TSN FANDOM?!)

 

  
_“It is the loose ends with which men hang themselves.”_  ―  **Zelda Fitzgerald**

* * *

Mark doesn't belong to her, though; not in the way he's just realizing he'd like to, at least.  
  
Every word out of Edie's mouth is Christy this and Christy that. Christy bought me a necklace. Christy's taking me out to dinner. I can't hang out tonight, I'm seeing _Christy_.  
  
 _He's clingy_ , she'd complained. But she gives in, every time, and lets Christy pull her away from her friends.  
  
Mark is starting to hate Christy, because he is interfering with theFacebook, and more than that, he's interfering with Mark's CFO. Edie's attention needs to be on theFacebook right now, not on some douchebag who dresses like some blast from the glam rock past and monopolizes all her time.  
  
And it's not that Mark doesn't want to see Edie happy, because he really does - but she's not happy. She's obsessed. She's possessed. Whenever she talks about Christy she gets this manic edge to her that worries Mark, worries him because her happiness should come from something tangible, like the work that they're doing. If Christy leaves her, if the whole thing crashes, then Edie will crash too, and Mark won't have that.  
  
But he can't figure out how to tell her this in a way that won't offend her, so he doesn't say anything. He just puts his headphones on and sits at his desk, fiddling and tweaking with theFacebook's code, until Chris and Dustin come like they always do to drag him off the computer and into the arms of sleep.

* * *

Mark and Edie go to New York over spring break to look for advertisers for theFacebook.  
  
Edie buys a perfume that smells like plums and cinnamon, wears a really short skirt, and makes a lot of pitches that don't go over very well. Mark studiously feigns disinterest and stares at the floor.  
  
New York in the spring suits Edie, Mark thinks. Everything is blooming and alive.  
  
"You know," Edie says as they walk out of the executive's office, "I think we'd have a lot more luck in these meetings if you didn't sleep through them. You make my job so hard."  
  
Mark scowls. "I wasn't sleeping."  
  
"Yeah, well, whatever you were doing, stop. It makes us look bad. We need to look professional and fancy." Edie surreptitiously adjusts the underwire of her bra.  
  
"Oh, is that why you wear purple lipstick? To be professional and fancy?"  
  
"No," Edie says, "I wear it because Christy says it makes me look pretty."  
  
Mark stares up at the buildings, the grey clouds of late afternoon reflected in their glossy surfaces, and doesn't reply.

* * *

Before they go have dinner with Sean Parker, they go back to the hotel so Edie can call Christy.

"No," she says, perching on the edge of the bed, taking off her pointy heels, "no, no, nothing happened, why would you think something happened? Why would you - he's just my friend, oh my fucking god. He is just my friend and we are here for business."  
  
Mark is checking his email and listening to music, but he can hear Edie's voice even through his headphones. He gets the distinct feeling he really isn't supposed to be hearing this conversation.  
  
"It's okay," Edie says. "I love you so much, baby. You know that, don't you?"  
  
Her face looks tight and pained, twisted with worry.  
  
"I do," she says. "I do, I do, I do. I'll call you after dinner. I love you so much, Christy. I have to go now. Okay, okay. Everything's fine. Bye."  
  
She hangs up, and stares at the phone for a while, turning it over in her hand as if she's only become recently acquainted with the idea of tangible objects. Then she stands up quickly, and turns to Mark.  
  
"Come on," she says, wiggling her feet into a different pair of shoes, "let's go meet Sean Parker."  
  
Mark takes his earbuds out, and rises to follow her.

* * *

Sean Parker has Mark spellbound in two minutes flat.  
  
Edie just sits there, next to Mark as always, and listens to the words of a man who's so drunk off his own success he barely even realizes that he already failed.  
  
Of course Mark likes Sean, Edie thinks. Mark likes anyone who he thinks is going to help make him cool.  
  
She personally doesn't see why it's so important. The idea of cool is subjective. It twists and mutates so rapidly there isn't much point in trying to pin it down.  
  
"That's smart, Mark," Sean says when Mark tells him about the way they expanded Facebook in Texas, and Edie glowers at him.  
  
"It was my idea," she says. "I did-"  
  
Sean grins, and looks into her chest instead of her eyes. "Hey, baby," he says smoothly, "why don't you let someone else do the talking for a little while."  
  
Mark doesn't say anything.  
  
Neither does Edie.  
  
The conversation continues.  
  
Edie feels likes she's watching Mark and Sean from behind a glass wall.   
  
All the waitresses know Sean. He calls them sweetheart and baby and doll face, and slaps them on the ass when they go back to get more drinks.  
  
Edie wonders if Sean thinks of her as nothing but a glorified waitress.  
  
She decides he probably thinks that way about all women.  
  
"A million dollars isn't cool," Sean says, and there's that word again, cool. "You know what's cool?"  
  
 _Not you, Sean Parker._  
  
Edie takes a sip of her drink and thinks briefly of smashing the glass.  
  
She has these fleeting moments sometimes, these little blips of anger that pass across her mind like scattered clouds.  
  
She wonders what would happen if she ever acted on one.  
  
Leaning in, a smirk on his face, Sean sinks in the final hook, "A billion dollars," Mark looking at him almost reverently.  
  
It's a sensation Edie hasn't felt since she was in high school, that nauseating flip of the stomach and jolt of the chest that accompanies the realization that she's been replaced. Or, at least, she knows she's going to be. Not her position, not directly, but it'll happen, because Edie has only ever been a tourist in other people's lives and this situation is no different.  
  
Sean smiles his super cool, billion-dollar smile again, and picks up the check.  
  
"We'll talk soon," he tells Mark.  
  
Mark smiles, and nods eagerly, and shakes Sean's hand.  
  
Edie stares at Sean coldly. He is a snake in the grass and she does not want to touch him. When she shakes his hand, she makes sure to do it a little too tight, a little painfully.  
She thinks of crushing all the bones in his fingers.  
  
"It was nice meeting you," Edie says.

* * *

"You want to end the party at eleven," Mark says petulantly in the cab.  
  
The lights of New York City blur around them like an ersatz sunset. Edie wishes they were walking instead, happy and free like she'd imagined a thousand times, on their way back from a far more pleasant occasion, acting like the kids that they still are.  
  
"I'm trying to pay for the party," Edie says.  
  
"There won't be a party unless it's cool."  
  
He's already talking like Sean. Pretty soon they're going to morph into one person and then where will Edie be? Nowhere, that's where. Back in Miami with two disappointed parents and a boyfriend who seems to be getting more and more paranoid every time she talks to him.  
  
Sometimes Edie can't believe her own life.   
  
"What'd you think?" Mark presses.  
  
"Yeah, let's drop the _the_."  
  
"I meant - "  
  
"I don't like Sean," Edie interrupts. "If that's what you're asking. He wasn't very professional."  
  
"You keep throwing that word around," Mark says. He's staring out the window, blank and disinterested. "This is something different than what you're used to. You're going to have to adapt."  
  
"I'm not going to adapt to being ignored that way."  
  
Mark still doesn't look at her.  
  
"Fine," he exhales, annoyed. "That's just fine, Wardo."  
  
When they get back to the hotel room, Edie peels off her skirt and her blouse and her suit jacket, sheds her pantyhose, puts on an oversized shirt, and crawls into bed, utterly drained.  
  
She falls asleep immediately, and forgets to call Christy.

* * *

The day Mark and Dustin leave for California, Edie drives them to the airport.  
  
"You can come and visit us anytime," Dustin says, reaching from the cluttered backseat to squeeze her shoulder affectionately. "Don't even call. Just show up."  
  
"I'll hold you to that," Edie smiles, unlocking the trunk so Mark and Dustin can get their stuff. "I am going to miss the fuck out of you both, you hear?"  
  
Dustin opens his door halfway, grabbing his backpack from the floor. "I hear. And we're going to miss the fuck out of you, too, Edie Louise."  
  
Edie twists around to look at Mark. "Keep Dustin out of trouble," she says. "Remember to sleep. Eat actual food besides ramen and Red Vines. Don't do anything stupid."  
  
"Okay, Mom," Dustin snarks as he gets out, shutting the car door behind him.  
  
Mark bites his lip a little. "I'll try," he says quietly. "Have a good summer, Wardo."  
  
Then the door on the other side slams, and Mark is gone too.  
  
As Edie drives away, she can see Mark and Dustin standing on the curb, waving at her frantically, their luggage in a heap around their feet. Part of her wishes that she could go with them, but she has advertisers to find and a boyfriend to pull back from the brink and a million and one other things to do.  
  
She will miss them, though. More than any pretty string of words could ever, ever express. She will miss Chris, the eternal voice of reason, and she will miss Dustin, her long-lost brother from another planet, and most importantly she will miss Mark, who is so many things at once she couldn't begin to count them.  
  
Edie goes back to New York, with Christy this time, and they rent an apartment together.  
  
Christy hangs strings and strings of Christmas lights all around the room even though it's June. He manages to find a job DJing at another club near the apartment, but he doesn't have very much to do while Edie is out looking for Facebook advertisers. Christy is bored, and restless, and itching for trouble.  
  
He has plenty of time to sit by himself and be paranoid. He has plenty of time to go through Edie's things. He has plenty of time to wonder about this boy named Mark Zuckerberg, and what his part is in Edie's life, and why he ultimately always seems to be more important than Christy.  
  
The thing about Christy is that he is very sad, and he has nearly always been very sad. Mama Lee always said of him, _you were born on a Wednesday, and you know what they say about Wednesday's child. Full of woe._ His expectations of life have never quite matched up to the dim reality, and it makes him heartsick. This is part of the reason why he parties so much, and why he sought Edie out in the first place, and why he moved in with her, because he is desperately trying to hide his melancholy from the waking world. He has constructed a paper-thin facade for himself of a bright smiling boy who knows all the answers, but really, he doesn't know anything at all.  
  
The more he thinks about it, though, the more he is sure that Edie does not love him, and that she has never loved him. That maybe she doesn't even have the capacity for love. He once held her so high in his mind, but now she has fallen off her pedestal, and the idea of the beautiful, sly-smiling, faithful Eduardo Saverin is gone forever.  
  
Christy's brain is running and spiraling in circles, until at last he hits upon a plan so devastatingly simple in its awfulness that he wonders why he never thought of it before.  
  
He knows, now. He knows what he has to do.

* * *

The next day, when Edie is walking to her third meeting of the morning, she gets a call from Christy.  
  
"What's up?" she asks. "Is everything okay?"  
  
"Why does your status say single on your Facebook page?"  
  
" _What_?"  
  
"Are you fucking Mark?"  
  
"Christy," she says, gently. "Oh, Christy. Why would you think that?"  
  
"Because it's true! Why else - why else would you be doing all this for him? Why would - "  
  
"This is my job. It's my job, that's all. I don't - I don't like him like that at all, I've told you before. Please, stop worrying."  
  
"You're lying," Christy says. "You lie to people all the time. You lie to me about where you are and when you come home and what you're doing. What wouldn't you lie about?"  
  
The people Edie's walking by are giving her funny looks. Her voice is starting to rise in pitch. "Please, baby. You have to believe me."  
  
"I don't think I can anymore."  
  
"He's my best friend and that's all! That's all!"  
  
Edie is seized with the idea of throwing her phone into traffic. Her fingers are twitching. It's so tempting, to just throw the little plastic brick into the street, watch it get crushed under the wheels of a taxi, pretend this conversation never happened, and carry on, business as usual.  
  
"I have to go," Christy says, sounding strained. "We'll talk when you get home."  
  
"I love you so mu-" Edie starts to reply, but Christy has hung up already.  
  
She puts her phone back in her purse and starts walking faster. Now is not the time to think about this. She'll deal with it when she gets home. Everything will be fine when she gets home. Everything will be fine.

* * *

When Edie gets in the taxi to go back to her apartment, she has nine missed calls from an unknown number, and her phone won't let her call back, much to her annoyance. She tries to call Christy again, but it goes to voicemail, so she leans her head against the cool glass of the window and sighs defeatedly.  
  
The first sign that something might be wrong comes when the taxi can't pull up to Edie's apartment building because there are so many police cars and ambulances and firetrucks around it. Edie fumbles in her purse for the money, pays the taxi driver, and gets out of the car, only to see the second sign that something might be wrong, which is that there are a lot of burned, black pieces of nothing where her apartment used to be.  
  
"Excuse me," a young police officer says, rushing over to where Edie is standing. "Are you Ms. Saverin?"  
  
Edie nods. She has no idea what's going on. It feels like she just walked into a Salvador Dali painting and everything is melting. If she saw someone with a clock for a face right now, she wouldn't even be surprised.  
  
The police officer starts talking, and everything he says rushes past her ears in a babble of sound.  
  
Christy was in the apartment when it burned down.  
  
Christy is dead.  
  
Christy is dead and nothing is ever going to be the same again.  
  
"We were supposed to talk," Edie says frantically. "We were supposed to talk, and I came home early so we could talk, and I had no idea it was this bad."  
  
"Right now, from what we've been able to piece together, it looks like there were - " the police officer doesn't even want to say the words to her, bless his heart, " - no survivors."   
  
She looks at the man in front of her, with his wide, tan, sympathetic face, and thinks, that's impossible. Christy will be back any minute now. He just went out for a walk and their apartment exploded. It happens to people all the time. 

The police officer is trying to talk to her, is trying to comfort her, is trying to get her into the car, but all Edie feels like doing is looking up at the wreckage of her former home, wondering if she's breathing in tiny bits of Christy right this second.  
  
She wants to throw up.  
  
"Do you have a place to stay?" the officer asks.  
  
"No, I-" Edie starts, and then remembers.  
  
Dustin's smiling face and the words, _You can come and visit us any time. Don't even call._  
  
"Yes," she says. "Yes, I do."


	6. by your side

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry in advance about whatever this chapter might do to your emotions.

  
_"And every time you feel like crying, I'm gonna try and make you laugh._   
_And if I can't, if it just hurts too bad, then we will wait for it to pass,_   
_and I will keep you company through those days so long and black._   
_And we'll keep working on the problem we know we'll never solve_   
_Of Love's uneven remainders, our lives are fractions of a whole..." -_ **Bright Eyes**   


* * *

Airports are surreal to Edie at the best of times, but at three in the morning, the whiteness of the walls and the echoing announcements and the jetlagged travellers around her all combine to make her feel like she's sleepwalking through a movie set.  
  
She gets the window seat on the plane, her favorite, and stares out at the clouds.   
  
Once upon a time in her bedroom in Miami, Edie made a small fortune predicting the movement of clouds.  
  
She only wishes she could predict the movement of people, how they slip into her life and then exit abruptly, permanently, leaving her with nothing but tearstained cheeks and the taste of coffee in her dry mouth.  
  
They hit some turbulence, and she remembers watching Fight Club with Mark and Dustin, the night that Dustin and Chris had a fight. She remembers the scene where the plane rips open and the people are flying out and Edward Norton just sits there calmly, waiting to die.  
  
If the plane rips open and crashes right now, Edie thinks, she wouldn't even be scared.

* * *

Edie stands on the doorstep of the house in Palo Alto, soaked despite her huge black umbrella. She's been knocking on the door for the past five minutes. She knows people are in there, because all the lights are on and she can see them.   
  
Maybe they're ignoring her, she thinks. Maybe Mark and Dustin decided to become best friends with someone else instead and forgot all about her.  
  
Predictably, as soon as this passes through Edie's mind, Sean Parker answers the door.  
  
"What's up?" he says, head tilted to the side, cradling a phone with his shoulder.  
  
"It's a long story. Can I come in? I need to talk to Mark."  
  
"Yeah, sure," Sean says, waving Edie in the door.   
  
She peels off her jacket and carefully puts it on the ground, since the house does not appear to have a coat rack. It does, however, appear to be a disaster zone. There are mattresses on the floor, dirty dishes piled high on every available surface, and several girls draped on the couch playing Counter-Strike.  
  
"What happened here?" Edie asks.  
  
"Not happened," Sean corrects. "Happening. This is the next big thing." He waves his hand to indicate the interns, situated at desks on one side of the room, hard at work writing code.   
  
Edie thinks this looks less like the next big thing and a lot more like what happens when you get a bunch of man-children who don't know how to take care of themselves in the same place.  
  
Out of nowhere, Dustin comes bounding over, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as ever. Before Edie can utter a word of protest, he scoops her up in a massive hug, somehow managing to lift her off the ground. At this, Sean rolls his eyes, and wanders over to the girls on the couch.  
  
"EDIE!" Dustin screeches, squeezing Edie so tightly she feels like her ribs may never recover. "I missed you!"  
  
"I missed you too," Edie says. "Please put me down."  
  
Dustin lowers her back down to the ground, eyes full of concern.  
  
"Something's wrong," he says. "You're so...flat. Not physically. Like, personality-wise. Did someone make a pancake out of your emotions?"  
  
"In a manner of speaking. Where's Mark?"  
  
"He's upstairs. Follow me," Dustin says.  
  
Edie trudges obediently up the stairs behind Dustin, her wet hair still dripping in her eyes. When they reach the top, Dustin takes a right, and knocks on a closed door that is covered in Finding Nemo stickers and a whiteboard that has GO AWAY scrawled on it in Mark's familiar, slanty handwriting.  
  
"Maaaark," Dustin calls. "Marky Mark. Marco Polo. Fuckerberg. Maaaark."  
  
"Go away. Can't you read the sign?"  
  
"You have a visitor from New York," Dustin singsongs. "She's extremely sad and almost drowned in the rain."  
  
The door yanks open, and there stands Mark, looking exactly the same as when Edie dropped him off at the airport a month ago.  
  
"Wardo," he says.   
  
"Hi, Mark."  
  
"How are you? How's Christy?"  
  
How's Christy. Oh, no. Here it goes.  
  
"Um," Edie begins, her voice shaking. "Christy died."  
  
It sounds so blunt when she says it like that.  
  
Dustin claps his hands over his mouth. "Oh my fucking god. I-" He looks to Mark for a moment, panicked, then back to Edie. "I am so fucking sorry. How does that even- oh jesus."  
  
"He set himself on fire," she says. "Burned down the whole fucking apartment."  
  
These are facts. She is stating facts. These are things that happened and they happened so fast and she doesn't think she'll ever be able to get over this hurt, so raw and new.  
Mark looks down at the carpet.   
  
"I'm sorry, Wardo," he says.   
  
"We were in a fight. We were in a fight and he thought I was cheating on him but I thought everything was going to be fine and then when I got home nothing was fine and I-"   
  
"Okay, okay. Breathe," Dustin says, putting a warm hand on Edie's back. "Come on, let's go in Mark's room and sit down."  
  
Edie nods, and walks into Mark's room. Except for the discarded Red Bull cans littering the floor, it's sparse and barely decorated. Dustin guides her to Mark's large, wobbly waterbed, and it's only after she sits down that she realizes how much her legs are trembling.  
  
"I'm so sorry," Mark keeps repeating. "I'm so sorry, Wardo."  
  
"It's okay. It's gonna be okay. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."   
  
"Thanks, Dustin," Edie says. "Thank you both."  
  
"Don't worry about it," says Dustin.   
  
"We have an extra room. You can stay here as long as you need to." Mark is clearly out of his element, and Edie knows he's never been good at dealing with other peoples' emotions, but she appreciates the gesture.

"Okay," she says. "Okay, thank you."  
  
Despite her best efforts, a tear falls, and then another, and then another. Before she knows it, Mark and Dustin have their arms around her, holding her upright as she sobs, trying to support her the best way they know how.  
  
Edie crying is a terrible noise, Mark thinks. She sounds like someone's ripping out her organs, piece by tiny piece. He wishes he could do or say something to make her stop, make her the Wardo that he knows again, put her world back in order, but he doesn't know how.  
  
After a while, Edie stops. She disentangles herself from the pair of them, wipes her eyes, and sniffs loudly.   
  
"Do you feel better?" Dustin asks.   
  
Edie shakes her head. "Not really."  
  
"You should take a shower. Did you bring any other clothes here? Wait, why am I even asking that, of course you didn't, what with the whole no-apartment-having thing, duh." Dustin smacks himself lightly on the forehead. "Edie, go shower. Mark, lend her some clean pajamas."  
  
"Dustin, you can't just order me around like that, I'm your CEO."  
  
"This is an emergency," Dustin says. "Our Brazilian is sad, the consequences could be devastating." He stands up and stretches a little. "I will return shortly with chalupas and beer."  
  
"Thanks, guys," Edie says in a small voice. "Thank you so much."  
  
"It's no problem, seriously."  
  
Edie nods, and stands, shuffling out of Mark's room and making a left into the tiny bathroom.   
  
The flourescent light above the mirror flickers on, and she stands there naked for a while, examining herself, cataloguing how she looks at this exact, painful moment.  
  
There is a fading hickey on her neck, small and blotchy with purplish-red spots, a physical mark of someone who has abruptly become no longer physical. Her eyes are puffy and pink from crying, and she can see little bumps on her cheek where stress acne will form. She hasn't eaten very much recently. Her hair isn't styled. Her eyebrows are becoming less and less neat.   
  
The complete picture of Edie that stares back at her looks like someone who hasn't taken care of herself in a very long time.  
  
In the shower, she looks down at her knees, and thinks about Christy drawing his hearts on her knees. She wishes, profoundly and with deep regret, that she had loved him in the same way that he loved her, desperately and passionately, and with a raging jealousy towards all those that dared to stand close to the circle of his blinding light.  
  
Edie did not love Christy, but she was fond of him, in the same way that people are fond of their good friends, or young princesses are fond of the princes they have to marry, or a blade of grass is fond of a droplet of dew that sticks to it at dawn and then evaporates as the day continues. She was only fond of him, and she thinks this is perhaps a tragedy unto itself, because if she is to be one of those girls who has young love cut short, it should at least be real love, and not just a fondness.  
  
Edie could agonize all night over what it should have been.   
  
What it is, however, is this:  
  
Edie gets out of the shower. She wraps herself up in one towel and wraps her wet hair in another, then walks into Mark's room and retrieves the spare pajamas he has lent her. She hurriedly dashes back to the bathroom to change. She pulls on Mark's shirt and pajama pants. The pant legs are too long for her and pool around her feet. She walks back to Mark's room and sits down on his massive waterbed, which she's pretty sure contains a small ocean.  
  
And despite her incredible sadness she is so happy that she knows Mark, and to Dustin, and to Chris who texts her his heartfelt condolences, because they are trying. They are trying so hard, especially Mark, and she is so grateful for their warm welcoming presence in her life.   
  
They sit on the floor of Mark's room, and eat the best chalupas that Edie has ever had ("courtesy of Benito's Taquitos," Dustin explains, "although they have way more than just taquitos, but I guess they wanted to rhyme"), and talk about nothing in particular. Dustin tells Edie about all the adventures they've had since they moved to Palo Alto, and Mark rambles about all the new features he's putting into Facebook, and Edie sits and listens, hoping the rhythm of their words will smooth away her hurt.  
  
"I'll show you the wall tomorrow," Mark says, adding hastily, "if you want."  
  
"Okay."  
  
"And poking," interjects Dustin. "I invented poking."  
  
Edie looks confused. "What's poking?"   
  
"A new and wonderful way to annoy your friends," Mark explains. "It makes sense that Dustin invented it."  
  
"Ow. You wound me, Zuckerberg."  
  
"Good," Mark says, and takes another bite of his chalupa, making a disappointed face as bits of taco meat and lettuce fall out of the side. "These would be so great if only they solved the construction problem."  
  
"Maybe after you finish Facebook you can work on the conundrum of chalupa engineering," Edie says.  
  
"Facebook's never going to be finished. But I'll keep that in mind in case I ever run out of things to do with my life."  
  
"You can put that on the Facebook masthead," Dustin says. "Mark Zuckerberg: Master of the Universe and Mexican Food Engineer."  
  
"I like Master of the Universe. Maybe I'll keep that."  
  
"Of course you do."   
  
Edie stands up and falls backward onto Mark's bed, bouncing slightly, the mattress sloshing in protest underneath her.  
  
"Let's do something," Dustin says suddenly. "Let's watch a movie. Edie needs to be distracted by happy things."  
  
"What movie?"  
  
"Um. The Princess Bride?"  
  
"Dustin," Mark chides. "That is not a happy movie. That is a movie where the heroine's boyfriend dies and then comes back to life and does a lot of heroic things. We want smiles to happen, not more sad whale noises."  
  
"Did you hear that?" Dustin gestures to Mark. "He just called you a sad whale. That is unacceptable."  
  
"I am a sad whale, though. I'm all lonely in the sea of existence." Actually, she's lonely in a sea of beer, but now isn't the time to quibble over technicalities.  
  
"You Brazilians and your poetry."  
  
"We're a desperately sentimental people, as a whole." Edie rolls around on Mark's bed listlessly, tipsy and bored.  
  
Dustin shrugs. "We could watch Moulin Rouge."   
  
"Someone dies in that too! Are you trying to give her PTSD?"  
  
"Fine, you pick something then."  
  
"We could watch this movie that Sean had on the other night," Mark says. "It's called Spirited Away and it has cute things and dragons. I wasn't paying too much attention, but I think you'd like it."  
  
"Well shit," Dustin says. "I am so down for cute things and dragons. Edie Louise?"  
  
"Oh, why not."  
  
Mark goes downstairs to retrieve the movie, Dustin cranks up the A/C until the room feels like the inside of an Arctic Blast, and then they all sprawl on Mark's bed, bathed once again in the comfortable glow of the television like they had been so many months ago at Kirkland.  
  
Edie tries to focus, and watch the movie, but all she can think of is how much the dragon-boy Haku looks like Christy, and how much the little girl Chihiro looks like her. She manages to hold it together until the end, when Chihiro starts talking about how much she loves her real name, and she flies away with Haku into the sky, holding hands forever. Edie hates her real name because it is another reminder of how she's a disappointment, and she won't get to fly away with anybody because the only person that wanted to isn't around anymore, and before she knows it she's crying again.  
  
Dustin has fallen asleep, spread out on the bed like a starfish, snoring lightly. Mark scoots over and sits next to her, hugging his matchstick legs to his chest.   
  
"Wardo," he says in a low voice. "I'm not going to tell you to be not sad, because you have every right to be. But don't make yourself sick over it. You owe yourself that much."  
  
"I'm try- I'm trying," Edie gulps. She's becoming aware that she has a massive, pounding headache, not helped by all the beer or carbohydrates she's ingested over the course of the evening. "I just- I can't stop thinking about it."  
  
Mark nods, his profile sharp in the half-light. "Did you love him?" he asks suddenly, startlingly clear.  
  
"I-" Edie starts. "In a way. But it wasn't the same way he loved me."  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"He wanted to keep me forever."  
  
From his side of the bed, Dustin rolls over and murmurs sleepily, "That isn't love. That's the emotion one feels towards their Pokemon card collection."  
  
"What?"   
  
"Someday, when you are less weepy," Dustin continues, staring up at Edie, "I hope you find someone who treats you like a person instead of a shiny Pokemon card they want to put in fancy laminate."  
  
"Oh, Dusty Springfield," Edie smiles. "What would I do without you?"  
  
"That's an alternate universe I feel pretty comfortable never speculating about," Dustin says. "Like the alternate universe where we're not friends with Mark."  
  
"I probably would have taken over the world by now," Mark says, "but taking over the world by yourself is kind of a lonely pursuit when you don't have your favorite minions by your side."  
  
"I feel so special," Dustin says. "I'm a favorite minion."

* * *

In Mark's bedroom that night, the strange magic of togetherness creeps over the three of them. Even though one of them is missing from their little group, it could almost be months ago again, almost be a time when they were all happy and bright-eyed and eager for the future. Still, as Dustin and Mark try to coax smiles onto Edie's face, try to make her forget her troubles for a little while, there is a general unspoken knowledge that the summer is already ruined. There will be a black spot in their memories over this July, and every July after it.   
  
And New York will be ruined for Edie, too, forever. She already knows that if she ever goes back there Christy's ghost will follow her. She'll see his face in every angular long-limbed Chinese boy she passes on the street, see those long sideswept bangs and dark keen eyes and his small ardent mouth, and she'll drive herself crazy knowing that she can't talk to him anymore, can't apologize, can't give him the help he so desperately needed.  
  
She didn't love him the way he loved her. She didn't.  
  
But now that he's gone, she's starting to love him more.  
  
The mythology of the grieving lover is a powerful one, and Edie's new role as the girl who got left behind gives her something to cling to. They would have gotten married, she dreams, if only. They would have been happy, she dreams, if only. The fire becomes more than an event, more than a trauma - it divides her life thoroughly into two pieces that can never again be resolved. And Christy is not just a sad, conflicted, misguided boy - now he is a symbol, larger than life, the standard to which all other boys must be held.

She can't go to the funeral. In fact, Christy's mother calls her explicitly to say that Edie is not welcome at the funeral. His family has chosen her to blame, as it turns out. 

Now, not only is Edie the girl who got left behind, she's also the girl who ruined everything.

She accepts this role, too. She's always worn guilt so well. 


	7. palo alto, i'm yours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never actually been to Palo Alto, so the place I am describing probably only exists inside of a Sofia Coppola film. 
> 
> Also, writing Dustin is a joy and a delight, and I think I might be slightly in love with him, which is weird.

 

_"There is no space wider than grief, there is no universe like that which bleeds."_ \- **Pablo Neruda**

* * *

At any given time, there are at least five or six girls of dubious legality in the Palo Alto house.  
  
They stare at Edie when she emerges from her room to start the day's work, turning to look behind the couch at her like so many sleepy-eyed raccoons. She thinks of asking Sean how old they are exactly, because she doesn't want this entire operation to crash and burn due to sexual harassment charges, but she knows he'd just lie to her or laugh in her face, so she makes an endeavour to ask the girls themselves.  
  
Edie finally gets her chance one night, when one of them comes in from the pool.  
  
The girl steps through the sliding glass doors, dripping wet, her eyes red-rimmed, her face blank. She's tall, long-legged like a newborn horse, blonde and tan in the almost nondescript way that all these California girls are blonde and tan.  
  
"Hey," she says to Edie, who's standing behind the counter, holding a beer.  
  
"Hey," Edie shrugs.  
  
The blonde girl walks over to the couch, sitting down with a heavy sigh.  
  
"I'm Christina," she says. "But you can call me Christie."  
  
"I'd rather not, actually. It makes me too sad."  
  
"Whatever. You can call me Tina, then, I guess. That's going to be my stage name when I'm an actress. Tina Lemons."  
  
Edie thinks it sounds like a bad porn name, but she doesn't say anything.  
  
Tina Lemons pops her bubblegum and leans back against the cushions.  
  
"How old are you, Tina?"  
  
"Twenty-one," she lies smoothly.  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Really."  
  
"You don't have to lie to me, I'm not going to tell anyone you're here," Edie says. "I'd say it's just us girls, but that makes it sound like I'm your new stepmother or something, and I just want to know if any of these assholes are creeping on you so I can set them straight."  
  
"Fine," Tina exhales, "I'm seventeen."  
  
"Jesus."  
  
"Kids these days, huh," she smirks.  
  
"I was doing the same thing," Edie says, not wanting to use the phrase _when I was your age_ , "then."  
  
"No you weren't."  
  
Edie walks over, sitting down tiredly beside Tina.   
  
"Yeah, I was," she says. "I was the holy terror of Miami when I was eighteen. I was a fuckup, but I was a smart fuckup, and I made a bunch of money because I could predict the weather, so then my dad shuttled me off to Harvard, and now I look for Facebook advertisers all day for no fun and no profit."  
  
"Wow," Tina says. "You, a holy terror."  
  
"I wouldn't recommend it."  
  
"Is this the part where you, like, set me on the path of righteousness?"

"No, this is the part where I tell you to go home and start hanging out with stupid boys your own age."

"But boys my age are  _boring,_ " Tina sighs. "And Sean is, like, so interesting."

"You would think that, wouldn't you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

 _It means stay away from him, he is poison,_ Edie wants to say. _It means that he has perfectly calculated his personality to appeal to girls like you. He is all flash and no substance. He will ruin you like he is ruining my best friend._ But instead she shakes her head, and says, "He is interesting in the same way a car crash is interesting. Sean is bad news. Never date guys who are into drugs like that."

"He only does pills," Tina says. "He can't snort or smoke anything, because of his allergies."

"I dated a boy who only did pills, too. Look where that got me."

The bitterness slips out of Edie's mouth before she can take it back. 

"Sean is different." 

Edie looks into Tina's eyes and sees the same hungry, vapid look of the sorority girls lined up outside Spark.  
  
It's frightening, the lengths people will go to to find something they can call love.

"No one's different, Tina Lemons," Edie says. "You'll see."

* * *

When Sean comes over, and everything turns into a party, Edie stays upstairs.

She can't remember when, exactly, she started actively avoiding people. Maybe she's slowly turning into Mark, and Mark into her, until he's gregarious and charming and she's reclusive and caustic. She's wearing the hoodie he gave her to keep warm that night at the AEPi party, and she's turned the air conditioner on to its highest setting so the room is super cold. Huddled in her bed, watching reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the old TV, she doesn't even notice that anyone's in her room until she feels a slight weight next to her and looks over to see Mark.

"Shouldn't you be down there?" she asks.

Mark shrugs. "It got boring. You weren't there."

Through the door, Edie can hear the laughter from downstairs, and Sean is telling a story that she can't quite make out the words of. There's a mocking tone in his voice; she wonders who he's talking about.

"Why didn't you come down?" he asks.

"I didn't feel like it."

Mark frowns a little, and looks down at the carpet. "Is it because you're sad?"

"No," Edie says. "Just tired, mostly."

Edie shifts positions, flopping onto her stomach, looking at the TV instead of at Mark. She thinks that maybe she should tell him about how old the girls downstairs really are, but she says nothing, and starts biting her bottom lip until she tastes the familiar copper of her blood. She wishes she could find the strength to tell him these things, but right now she feels like she's drowning, and the surface is so far above her head she doesn't know which way is up. On the TV, Buffy and  Spike are having another fight, and Edie reaches for the remote to change the channel, because Buffy is another girl who falls in love with the people who destroy her most, and Edie doesn't know if she can stand seeing that any more.

"Please come downstairs," Mark says. "Dustin told me that I need to make sure you socialize. For your health."

"What a hilarious role reversal this is turning out to be. And I don't want to go downstairs, Sean is there."

"What is your  _problem_ with Sean?"

"He's basically useless. Dustin is a better programmer. All Sean does is come over here and waste everyone's time."

The corners of Mark's mouth turn down. "Sean has connections - "

"Yeah, to drug dealers," Edie snaps. 

"We don't know that any of that's true."

"You can read about it, Mark."

"There are a lot of things one could read about," Mark says. "If one were so inclined. That doesn't make them true."

Edie stands up. "Fine. Whatever. I'm going downstairs."

She's not really dressed to interact with people, but she doesn't care, and no one even notices her coming downstairs. Someone pushed the other couch against the living room wall so that there would be more space for people, but there is still barely any breathing room. Edie can't even see anyone she knows here. She weaves through the crowd, looking for Dustin, or one of the interns, or even Tina Lemons, but all she finds is a tray of apple pie shots on the kitchen counter. Edie takes one, draining it neatly and placing it back on the tray, and then takes another. By the time Dustin finds her, she is four shots to the wind and just shy of slurring her speech.

"Well, hello there," Dustin says, mock-seductively. "What's a nice drunk like you doing in a place like this?"

"I live here," Edie says. 

"Oh, do you?" He laughs. 

"I've been hiding lately."

"From who?"

"I think you know." Edie makes a face. " _Sean._ "

Dustin snorts. "You mean Mark's new boyfriend?" 

"Ugh, yes."

"Don't worry, you're safe. He's outside. With his entourage." Dustin makes sardonic finger-quotes around the word "entourage."

"Thanks for letting me know," Edie says, and tries to take another apple pie shot, but Dustin grabs her firmly by the wrist and says "No," in the same tone that he uses to scold Mark when he's been coding too long.

"Why are you cutting me off?" whines Edie, looking up at Dustin with shiny, pleading eyes. "You're mean."

"No, I'm looking out for you so you don't get too schwasty-faced later and say things that you'll regret." 

"I don't need a babysitter. I can take care of myself."

"Says the girl who's been taking shots out of...are these  _medicine cups,_ oh, how classy - " Dustin shakes his head in disapproval " - and is currently attending a party in her pajamas."

Edie points at Dustin accusingly. "Hey. No judging."

"I'm your second-best friend. I think I'm allowed."

Edie is about to retort with something screamingly witty, but someone has just turned the music up even louder, and the one-liner left her head just as quickly as it came, so instead she winks drunkenly at Dustin and starts dancing. Before she knows it, both of them are flailing their arms in the air like two ersatz Kermit the Frogs, bopping around to some song that repeats the words  _danger! Danger! High voltage!_ over and over again. Dustin apparently knows this song by heart. Edie is not surprised.

"Guess what?" he yells over the music.

"What?"  
  
"Chris called me last night and we ended up talking for three hours and I think we might be dating!"

"Holy shit," Edie yells back with genuine glee, "that is fucking fantastic news!"

"Indeed it is, Edie Louise. Now dance up on me."

And Edie does, because how could she refuse? 

It's only later, when she and Dustin are slow dancing sleepily in the living room, red solo cups and other people's clothing scattered around their feet, that Edie notices Mark watching them from the stairs. 

"You are the best friend," Dustin mumbles into the top of Edie's head. "It's you."

"And you are the worst sentence constructor," Edie says, trying to disentangle herself from Dustin's octopus-like arms. 

Dustin frowns. "Are you leaving me alone? All by myself with these idiots?" He gestures to the six other people in the living room, all of whom are draped over the sofas in various states of drunken slumber. "What if one of them wakes up?"

"I think you can manage," Edie says, and squeezes Dustin's shoulder reassuringly.

Somewhere between the time Edie first noticed Mark and now, he has vanished, and the whiteboard on his door reads DO NOT DISTURB UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES (EVEN IF YOU ARE WARDO).

Edie doesn't know what to make of any of this at all, but all she knows is that despite everything that's happened to her over the past three weeks, she  _still_ likes Mark, and the very thought of it makes her feel guilty and sick beyond belief. When she finally falls asleep that morning, still wearing his hoodie, she dreams of Mark standing on the stairs, except this time he doesn't disappear right away, and she manages to press a single kiss onto his lips before he fades into smoke.

* * *

"I'm _dying_ , Wardo."  
  
Edie sighs, grips the steering wheel tighter, and wishes she wasn't doing this. "No you're not," she says for the millionth time. "You're going to be fine."  
  
"WebMD told me I was dying," Mark whines.  
  
"Remember the other time WebMD told you that you were dying, but you actually just had salt poisoning because you were dumb enough to eat nothing but pretzels all day?"  
  
"Yeah, but that was different."  
  
"Did Sean give you drugs?"  
  
"No," Mark says.  
  
"Then what is wrong with you?"  
  
They're stopped at a light. Edie starts to rub her eye because it's itching her, then remembers too late that she's wearing makeup. Her cat eyes are coming off on her fingers.  
  
"I don't know," Mark says. "I just feel like I'm dying."  
  
"How descriptive."  
  
The light turns green.  
  
In the early hours of the morning, Palo Alto becomes a kind of fairyland. The sky is hovering between dark and dawn, some stray stars twinkling brightly overhead, and all the neon signs rush by in a blur as Edie goes far, far over the speed limit.  
  
When she was younger, Edie used to wish that she had a big pink convertible with fins so some boy with slicked-back hair could drive her around in it, but she has to admit that driving around sad Jewish boys who think they're dying also has a certain charm to it, in the we're-probably-going-to-laugh-about-this-later kind of way.  
  
"What would you do if you were dying, Wardo?"  
  
 _I would kiss you, you idiot_ , she bites back. "I'd swim with sharks. I already did it once but I want to do it again."  
  
"You did?"  
  
"Yeah," she says, feeling proud of herself. "I was seventeen. I went down in a big cage with some divers. I wasn't even scared, it was awesome. I looked right into the shark's eyes and everything."  
  
Edie thinks sharks are misunderstood creatures. The only reason they attack people is because sometimes the shadow swimmers cast makes them look like seals from above.  
  
She would probably be a shark, she thinks, if she wasn't a person.  
  
"If you ever do it again," says Mark, "I want to go with you."  
  
"Okay."  
  
"I'm serious, I would."  
  
"I said okay already, you can come with me!"  
  
They pull into the parking lot of the emergency room. Mark falls all over himself trying to get out of the car because he's shaking so much, and Edie starts to think he really might be dying.  
  
"When was the last time you slept?" she asks him as they walk to the entrance.  
  
Mark runs a hand through his curls. "A while," he says.  
  
"You have got to stop staying up all night."  
  
"Says the girl who's up at three a.m. to drive me here."  
  
"Yes, well," Edie says tiredly, "you're an emergency."  
  
As it transpires, Mark is not actually dying, just somewhat sleep-deprived and suffering from the effects of a diet that mostly consists of Red Vines, Mountain Dew, and tuna. The staff at the emergency room side-eye Mark and Edie something fierce for wasting their time, and the two shuffle back to the car, tired and wired and not quite ready to go back to the house yet.  
  
"We should do something," Mark says.  
  
 _Yeah, like make out_ , Edie thinks, but she pushes it down, pushes everything down, and says, "Sure."  
  
It's four-oh-two in the not-quite-morning, and they get food from McDonalds and cruise around the almost empty streets. There are girls in spangled dresses already doing the walk of shame back to their apartments, and the radio's playing a charmingly off-key Roxy Music cover. Mark is starting to calm down a little now that he has solid food in him and the sun is almost up. When he's working, there is nothing else but him and the work, and nothing else matters; the world could spin right off its axis and into the moon, and he wouldn't even care.  
  
He's lucky, he thinks as he looks at Wardo driving, that he has someone like her, to gently tug on the string of his wayward balloon and pull him back to earth.  
  
"Like a dream in the night," Edie sings, unabashedly loud and out of tune, "who can say where we're going," and Mark wishes they could just keep driving and never stop, drive until they're back on the East Coast where they belong, drive until Miami and Wardo's parents and a life he's only heard about but never seen.  
  
Edie finally stops the car in a parking lot overlooking a bunch of trees, and they just kind of sit there for a while, Edie sucking down the last of her orange juice and Mark staring out the window.  
  
"You know," she says finally, wanting to break the silence, "I tell you about my life all the time, but you never tell me any stories."  
  
"My life is mostly pretty boring," Mark says, which isn't true at all.  
  
"Pffft, I bet it's not."  
  
"Fine, I'll tell you a story. I guess."  
  
Edie finds the lever on her seat that makes it recline, leaning the seat back all the way until she can basically lie down on it.  
  
"Awesome," she says, yawning a little.  
  
Mark tells her the story about how when he was little he put on a Superman cape and jumped off the stairs because he thought he could fly, and broke his arm in three places.  
  
Edie lies there, and laughs at all the right moments, and winds a strand of her hair around her finger.  
  
"I did stuff like that when I was little," Edie says. "Except I wanted to break myself on purpose. My dad was always scared I was going to get kidnapped, but there were more immediate dangers than he realized."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"Oh, I cut my palm open with my dad's razor once because I wanted to see if it was sharp. I still have the scar."  
  
Edie holds out her right palm, and Mark, amazed by his own daring, traces the thin white vertical line.  
  
"It must have been really deep," he says.  
  
"It was. My mom was freaking out all over the place. Just screaming and screaming."  
  
"I bet."  
  
"Sometimes I still feel like doing weird things like that," Edie says. "Not like, hurting myself on purpose because I'm sad. But just to see what would happen. I would never do it, but the impulse is there. I guess that's why I liked Christy so much. We had the same impulses."  
  
Mark presses his lips together, and doesn't say anything.  
  
"He thought I was cheating on him with you," Edie continues. "And he was on a lot of drugs. And I guess he just couldn't take it. I don't know. It's so weird to think about. A boy set himself on fire for me."  
  
"Like Helen of Troy," Mark mumbles.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Helen of Troy. The face that launched a thousand ships."  
  
"Yeah, I guess it's like that," Edie says. "Except nobody started a war over me, and he's dead, and I don't know why any of this is happening at all."  
  
"It's happening." Mark feels somewhat philosophical tonight, this night of fading stars and fake emergencies. "And someday it will have happened. And then there will be a lot of good things, and you won't have any reason to be sad."  
  
"You're the best person," Edie says thickly. "I hope you know that."  
  
Edie pulls her seat back up, and starts the car. The first pink fingers of sunrise are creeping over the horizon, streaking into the fading deep blue of the sky.  
  
"Come on, Marco Polo," she says. "Let's go home."


	8. circumstantial (do the twist)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh this chapter was the hardest to write, which is coincidentally the reason why it sucks so much. 
> 
> Also, if you are easily squicked or triggered by somewhat dubious sexual situations as well as drug references/situations, I warn you not to proceed further. This chapter is kind of problematic and weird, but silly college kids are silly college kids and I can't very well write them as anything else.

 

  
_"Infidel to die for/What I am doing will happen in the morning, when the mirror won't recognize me..."_ \- "The Twist", **Metric**

* * *

Years later, when Mark is lying in his massive, white bed, in the equally massive white bedroom of his sparse and cavernous house, feeling lost beyond measure, he will think of a photograph.  
  
It was a Polaroid, old and yellowed by now if it even still exists, tucked underneath the mattress of his bed at the Palo Alto house, a place so long ago and far away it seems like a fairy tale.  
  
In the picture, Edie was standing with the ocean behind her. The sky was overcast behind her, threatening rain. Edie was standing in profile, and her hair was lifted upwards by the wind, forming a halo around her head and sticking to her tan face. There was a look in her eyes, something remote and distant, that haunted Mark so much he couldn't put the photograph on his wall with the rest of them. He had to shove it under his mattress, and sometimes, in his guiltiest moments, he would take it out and look at it when he jerked off.  
  
In his fantasy, Edie was fey and coy when she turned to him, and she took him by the hand, and everything in her eyes and smile said yes even if she was too flushed and love-shy to speak.  
  
That girl is gone now, Mark knows, because she was never there.

* * *

Here are the minutiae of the summer that is passing by:  
  
A cracked CD case in the glove compartment of Edie's car, with "Dustin's Mix" written on it in bold black marker, and little gold star stickers on the spine. There is an insert inside with the tracklisting, and for every song that Dustin considers his favorite, there is another little golden star next to the title.  
  
A pair of abandoned white lace underwear, lying on the dewy grass. Next to it is the iridescent, jellyfish-like vileness of a used condom. There are marks on the ground from where a girl's hands scrambled frantically, and a French-manicured nail beside them.  
  
A stack of papers that Edie finds in Sean's room when she's looking for her bathrobe, papers that let her know that he's been setting up meetings, papers that say things about new investors and new advertisers that she would never have known about otherwise.  
  
Empty cans of Mountain Dew lined up on Mark's windowsill, glinting in the early morning sunlight as he lies sprawled facedown in his bed, lost in the kind of dreamless sleep that only comes after total exhaustion.  
  
Chris and Dustin kissing, and kissing, and kissing, in the hallway and in the kitchen and in Dustin's room and everywhere, because they are in Love with a capital L and Chris doesn't care who knows about it anymore.  
  
Edie, sitting on the edge of the pool with her feet in the water, her mouth stained red from cherry Popsicles and gnawing absently on her own lips.

In the front yard, smashed glass, blood, and someone's tooth, fragments of a fight just past.  
  
It's early August, and already there is autumn and death in the air, the knowledge that the leaves will soon turn to their fall colors and lie rotting on the ground. So the children in the Palo Alto house work twice as hard, and their celebrations turn more violent and joyful, because even if they are not fully cognizant of the fact, something in them is aware that life will never be this strange and sweet again. Some of them will go back to their schools, and some of them will stay in California, but all of them, sooner or later, will grow up.  
  
Edie, Mark knows, already has.

* * *

"Mark," Edie says gently, "are you high?"

  
Mark grins, giddy and swooning, "No, no, no, no. Well, maybe a bit. A little bit. I took some allergy medication."  
  
He points to a variety of pills scattered on the desk, which are small and purple and stamped with little smiley faces and are definitely not allergy medication.  
  
"Mark," Edie says again, "you're high as fuck."  
  
He lies back on the bed, looking inordinately pleased with himself. "Oh yeah?"  
  
"Yeah," Edie says, an edge creeping into her voice. "Those are not Benadryl. I am pretty sure that's Sean's Ecstacy."   
  
"Oops."  
  
Edie shakes her head and covers her face with her palm.  
  
Without warning, Mark reaches up to pull Edie onto the bed with him, his warm hands wrapping around her spindly wrists.  
  
"Come here," he whines, "come here, Wardo."  
  
"Mark - "  
  
"Come here, please."  
  
She lets him pull her down, lets him curl around her like some forest animal, and they lie there together, his head resting in the space between her neck and shoulder.  
  
"Pretty," he says. "You're so pretty. You're so pretty."  
  
"Thanks, Mark."  
  
It's just the pills talking, the pills that he mistook for allergy medication because Sean is a fuckwit and leaves his drugs out all over the place. Mark doesn't mean it, Edie reminds herself. It's just the pills talking and she can't believe them even if she likes what they say.  
  
She could kiss him now, she thinks. It would be so easy to just close the distance. But if she does, nothing will ever be the same, and when he is himself again he will never forgive her.  
  
"I had a dream," he says, and his hands roam across her back. "I had a dream and you were in it and we were in Miami."  
  
"Oh."  
  
He's holding her so tightly, like he's scared she's going to crumble into sand.  
  
"You were looking at the ocean, and your hair was blowing in your face, and you were wearing a bunch of veils, and you were so sad," he says. "I think you were at a funeral. Then you walked into the sea and I couldn't find you."  
  
Edie inhales sharply, and tries not to cry.  
  
"Please don't go anywhere that I can't find you," he says, and kisses her jaw, pathetically earnest. "Please, Wardo."  
  
"I promise," she whispers, petting the hair at the nape of his neck with her thumb, trying to calm him down. "I promise, Marco Polo. I'll stay right here."  
  
"You'll never leave me?"  
  
Edie looks in his huge, blissful gray-blue eyes. "Never," she says. "I'll never leave you."  
  
Mark is thinking about the dream that he had, the images replaying through his mind on an endless loop, and he keeps seeing Wardo walking into the sea even as she lies beside him and holds his hand. He'll never call her Edie, because Edie is the name she made up to pretend to be someone else. Around Dustin and Chris and Sean and the guys, she's Edie Saverin and she's not afraid of anything, but when she's with Mark she's just Wardo, and if she turns into the ocean and disappears, he doesn't know what he'll do.  
  
"Please don't turn into the ocean." He shuts his eyes tight. "Please, Wardo."  
  
Edie closes her eyes as well, bites back the words _that's impossible, Mark_ , squeezes his hand. "I won't. I promise, I promise. I'll stay right here."  
  
"How can you be sure?"  
  
"I'm as sure as a shark is sure that it can kill," she says.  
  
She feels, rather than sees, him smile at her. "You're funny," Mark says. "Has anyone ever told you that?"  
  
"No, not really."  
  
"Well, you are," he says. "You're the funniest girl I know."  
  
"You don't know a lot of girls, Mark."  
  
"I know Erica," he says. "And I know Alice from that one time, and I talk to some of the girls that Sean brings over, but they make me sad to look at or think about, and they don't say things like you do."  
  
He begins tangling his fingers into her hair, and Edie reaches for his hand, shooing him away. "No, Mark," she says. "You can't do that."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"Because there are rules."  
  
"I didn't know there were rules to being friends."  
  
"There are lots of rules about being friends," Edie says. "You know, I don't even think I should be here right now."  
  
She sits up quickly, and is about to leave and go back to her room, but Mark turns and looks at her like a kitten that got left out in the rain, and clutches at her wrist again.  
  
"Don't leave," he says. "What if I fall asleep and die?"  
  
"I don't think you will."  
  
"I'm going to fall asleep and die, and it'll be your fault, and everyone will hate you for abandoning me." There's a smile in his voice that lets her know he's joking, but she takes him seriously anyway.  
  
"Everyone hates me already," Edie says.  
  
"I don't hate you." Mark sits up, and scoots to the edge of the bed so he can sit next to Edie. "And Dustin and Chris don't hate you. You're the one that keeps us all together. That's why you can't leave."  
  
Right now, Edie is the farthest thing from together.  
  
"What if I want to leave?" she says quietly.  
  
Mark tilts his head. "Why would you want to do that?"

Edie starts trying to rip off a hangnail, concentrating on the small prickling pain so she doesn't have to think about what she's saying. "This house is killing me," she says. "I can't be here anymore. It's so flat and stale, and I never know what day it is because everything blurs into everything else. Sometimes I go to San Fran, but no matter how many advertisers I go to, no one takes me seriously."  
  
"We should run away," Mark says. "Can we go live in a forest somewhere?"  
  
"I don't think they have wi-fi in the forest, Mark."  
  
"Oh." He slips his hand into hers again.  
  
"Yeah, that might not be the best place for us to live."  
  
"We can still run away, though, right?"  
  
"Sure, if you want." Edie squeezes Mark's hand absent-mindedly. "God, I'm so glad you're not like this all the time."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"You're asking too many questions."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"See, there you go again. You keep doing it. Stop it."  
  
Mark wrinkles his nose at her. "No. You stop it."  
  
"Stop what - "  
  
And then, before Edie knows what's what, Mark leans forward and presses his mouth softly onto hers.  
  
Edie reacts with a quiet _mmf_ of surprise, but doesn't pull away; part of her knows that it's wrong, that friends should not be doing things like this, that Mark wouldn't do this normally, but right now she can't bring herself to care that much. They fall backwards onto the bed, Edie re-positioning herself on top of Mark. Flush against each other, they begin again, Mark sucking slowly on Edie's bottom lip, his fingers traversing the bumps of her spine through her shirt. When she pulls away, her breath is shaky, and she's trembling a little.  
  
"Are you sure," she begins, and Mark smirks back at her "Yes, of course," his words warm and golden, "I want this, Wardo."  
  
She kisses him again, harder this time, her lips parting, sneaking some tongue in there. From the way Mark's kissing her back, she can tell he's only ever done this maybe twice before, because he doesn't quite know what to do with his tongue or his hands, but he's getting the hang of it with every passing second. Edie starts to grind her hips into his almost unconsciously. Mark's hard already, she can feel it through his stupid cargo shorts, and the more she moves, the more he makes these great little moaning noises against her mouth.  
  
Fifteen minutes ago, she didn't even want him to touch her hair, and now they're dry-humping like a couple of high school kids playing Seven Minutes in Heaven in someone's hall closet.  
  
Edie wonders if she's on something, too.  
  
Eventually, Mark is all kissed out. He gets up to go jerk off in the bathroom, comes back, and curls up next to Edie, falling asleep almost instantly. Edie stays awake a while longer, watching the alarm clock on the nightstand blink _3:54, 3:54, 3:55_ , her emotions vacillating between horrible, soul-gnawing guilt and a kind of dizzy exhilaration. She wills her burning eyelids to slide her into sleep, but she can't stop thinking about what just happened, and wondering if it would have happened normally.  
  
This is the last time that Mark and Edie sleep in the same bed for quite a while.

* * *

Edie wakes up before Mark, slips out of his bed, goes back to her room.   
  
All day, she purposefully keeps her distance from him. He makes eye contact with her once, briefly, when she enters the kitchen to get some water, giving her that look that says _yes, I remember, and no, we're not going to talk about it._  
  
Edie thinks about Mark's thin fingers brushing her spine, the gentle way he kissed her, the softness of his voice when he told her she was pretty, and shivers.  
  
She doesn't eat that day until four in the afternoon. There are times when she likes being in her room alone, lying on her bare-mattressed bed because she's too lazy to put on new sheets, watching the relentless California sun filter in through the blinds. The ceiling above her is bare and bone-white, and Edie is content to watch the shadows pass above it while the things that happened last night happen over and over again in her head.  
  
Before Mark, the last person she had kissed was Christy.  
  
Christy on acid, in their New York room, the Christmas lights flashing on and off, Daft Punk as background makeout music, feeling like magic, feeling a thousand miles away.  
  
She can still hear his frantic voice, pleading with her, lost in his own delusion.  
  
"Are you fucking Mark?!"  
  
Well, shit. Christy was almost right, after all.  
  
The guilt consumes her yet again, gnawing at her insides as much as her hunger does. If she goes downstairs, then Mark will look at her again the way he did before, and then she will want to fuck him, because they both remember, and it's such a lovely secret to have that maybe it should continue.  
She has to get over this, she has to get over herself. This can't be about what she wants. She told Mark last night that there were rules about being friends, but Edie doesn't want to follow those rules herself, and she knows that deep down, she's just a big, disgusting hypocrite who doesn't care who she hurts. A boy set himself on fire for her, shouldn't that be enough? Her heart is carnivorous, and when it gets what it wants from Mark, it'll tear at his feelings with its sharp little teeth, preying on the sweetness she saw last night, until someone else comes along.  
  
Maybe she hates Sean so much because she knows she'll be like him someday. That she's like him already, only instead of empty-headed teenage girls, she likes smart, self-destructive boys, and she ruins them even better than they ruin themselves. Maybe she should fuck Sean instead. She'd be lying to herself if she denied thinking about it. Mostly she just wants to fuck the snark and attitude out of him, make him think she's finally given in to his lack of charm and then turn the tables on him, slap the smirk off his face, leave him breathless and out of control -  
  
No. That would be too awful, even for her. If she did that, she'd break her own heart.  
  
Edie sits up, and then gets off her bed slowly. She's worn out, tired, dusty like a dead moth. Her shoes are lined up neatly by the dresser, and she slides on her flip-flops, grabs her purse from where it hangs on the closet door handle, checks the mirror to make sure her hair isn't sticking up. She suddenly wants to go somewhere, anywhere, but she doesn't want to go alone, so she leaves her room and knocks on Dustin's door three times in quick succession.

"What?" he calls through the closed door. "I'm busy."  
  
"Busy doing what?"  
  
"...Important things."  
  
Edie pokes her head in the door. Dustin is sitting on his bed, PS2 controller in hand, still in his pajamas. "Playing Final Fantasy does not constitute an important thing," she says. "Wanna go to Del Taco with me?"  
  
"You have no idea of the importance of Final Fantasy," Dustin says. "It's the _final fantasy_."  
  
"No it's not, you have like twelve of those games. Come on, you need sunlight."  
  
Dustin sighs and pauses his game. "Okay, fine. For you, I will put on real pants."  
  
"I feel so special."  
  
"You should."  
  
Edie waits outside while Dustin puts on real pants, and then they go downstairs and outside, Dustin excited at the prospect of riding shotgun in Edie's car for once (since that position is nearly always taken by Mark). Once they get in, Edie slamming the car door behind her just a little too firmly, Dustin takes the CD he made her out of the glove compartment and pops it in the player as she backs out of the driveway.  
  
"Dustin, this song is awful," Edie complains.  
  
"But he's bringing sexy back."  
  
"He should have left sexy wherever he found it."  
  
"You are such a hater," Dustin says cheerfully, and turns the volume up.

They talk about a lot of things, later, when they are sitting in her car in the Del Taco parking lot, but Edie does not mention what happened between her and Mark the night before. She decides that she will keep it to herself, and try her utmost to forget about it.

But of course, it's not going to be so easy as all that. 


End file.
